The Waitakere Way - Looking Back, Going Forward - Auckland Council

PAGE 8‘It’s that open-mindedness, the flexible thinkers, the creative thinkers and people who arerelationship-builders. I guess it’s building trust, so that you try and be as honest as you can. Iknow there’s a lot of cynicism about politicians, but the people I’m talking about are as honestas people are. I think is quite a rare quality of directness and honesty – as much as youpossibly can in your own life’.‘And in a lot of ways, optimism is a key thread, a belief that you can make a difference. So Ido think that optimism is something, and you can share that’.Ongoing relationships‘It’s all about personal trust.. those relations have built up over a long time. So we’ve actuallygot the pay-off now, still. A lot of people are the same players. They’ve gone and come back.There are some dangers in that. You become a bit incestuous, if you don’t check outside…Like, at the moment, Council, when they look at Community Planning, have to be thinking,should we be just talking to the networks we already have, or do we have to go beyond them?People and networks across the whole city‘I mean, compare us with other places I’ve worked, where there are hardly any effectivecitywide networks. Whereas here, you started off with strong citywide networks, and theyremain strong citywide networks’.Ratepayers and greens‘There were other things happening in our Community around that time. In the Valley we hada very strong Ratepayers Group. That was pre Shadbolt – a couple of terms before. Ourgroup was committed to preserving the rural lifestyle and beauty of our area. Urban growthplanned by the Council was a real threat. So there was a huge amount of work involved, anda lot of fun too. People striving to do what they believed in, and going to huge lengths to do it.We organized the petition. Imp talking about families busy with young kids, professionalpeople many of whom worked in the City. But there was real commitment to the area and itspreservation’.From playcentre to the world!‘…we strongly believed in the need to have our own identity, to be in control of our owndestiny. People together making decisions for themselves – not being “done to”. We just didit, We had a strong belief in it and in our ability to do it. It was for the benefit of our childrenand we grew strong as a community from it. Playcentre gave me, and many other women inthe community, the opportunity for personal growth through the training programme. Thatwas a major turning point for me and set me off on an unintended career path’.A Citizen’s Advice Bureau‘Assid Corban was mayor of Henderson. This was before the amalgamation of Henderson,Glen Eden and Waitemata and we looked around and decided that there were all thesevarious organisations that had all sprung up but nobody knew who they all were and theywere all separate. So we decided that we would set up a Citizen’s Advice Bureau and had apublic meeting and away it went. Of course, at the same time, Citizen’s Advice Bureauxthroughout New Zealand were beginning to develop and you had a national organisation, a bitof an office and we had meetings to look at our ethics and how we were and everything else.It was quite a rallying point. In Henderson here, we set up. We had a very active group andthe Combined Churches were behind us and they had this derelict house up in Lincoln Roadsothey let us have this derelict house to function from. The Presbyterian Church used it onSundays for bible class and so on but we had it during the week. It was condemned but it wasstill liveable. Somehow, Isaac and his council provided us with a bit of basic funding and wealso linked up. The Methodist City Mission. At this stage they had social worker out here. Avery very bright, intelligent delightful person and she steered us through the business of howto set up and run an organisation. She was absolutely invaluable. It was the Minister’s