Leading from the front issuu

A good number of community development associations
around Aotearoa struggle to achieve
financial stability. What steps have you taken and
what forward planning is involved in keeping the
balance sheet solvent?
We review our financials at senior management meetings,
board meetings and financial quarterly reviews.
We set up monitoring systems to review that costings
are within budgeted expenditure. We continually challenge
ourselves to find the means to retain and care for
our employees, as well as maintaining financial sustainability.
In 2021 the Gisborne YMCA has adopted the living
wage minimum, which has increased all hourly rates
to $22.10 minimum, recognising that the living wage is
necessary for our employees’ quality of life. We have
also implemented 10 days sick leave entitlements to all
staff. This has increased our wage costs by $500k but
we still have a budgeted surplus for the year. We want
to be recognised for not only being a great employer but
also that we deliver quality services to our community
with a particular focus on children and young people.
YMCA Gisborne is one of the six YMCAs around
the country that runs funded courses for Tertiary
Education Commission (TEC). How do you deal
with balancing the specific requirements of running
TEC courses along with what YMCA Gisborne
sees as the needs on the ground?
We operate TEC funded literacy and numeracy programmes
to support young people who have failed at
school so they can eventually be employed. It fits in with
our holistic approach to supporting young people. We
also run Alternative Education classes for the same purpose,
to engage with young people who are not able to
be integrated into a normal school environment.
With more complex social issues today and fresh
challenges that test and challenge traditional
models of community development, how do you
keep Gisborne YMCA relevant?
By always adapting to meeting the changing needs of
our community; being proactive at looking at new initiatives
and building strong working relationships especially
with government departments. We have been
offering Breakaway government funded free holiday programmes
for over 12 years now and increased our youth
engagement from the contractual five weeks, 100 young
people; to running services 50 weeks of the year to keep
young people engaged and off the streets.
JAMES K BAXTER
COMES TO TOWN
Ralph Alexander from the Ahuriri Rotary invited
James K Baxter to come and talk at a meeting in
the mid-70s, which James K duly did, barefoot
and all. Whanganui River, James K and Jerusalem,
where the poet lived for many years, has a lot of
significance for Pat. Recently a group on a Te Araroa
Offers Hope hikoi spent some time on the river
and visited Jerusalem. Catherine and Pat often
explored the river too. They stayed at Jerusalem
many times and Catherine, a practicing Catholic,
was fascinated with Mother Aubert’s Daughters of
Our Lady of Compassion Home and school, established
in 1885 for orphans and underpriviledged
children.
NEW ZEALAND
by james k. baxter
(for Monte Holcroft)
These unshaped islands, on the sawyer’s bench,
Wait for the chisel of the mind,
Green canyons to the south, immense and passive,
Penetrated rarely, seeded only
By the deer-culler’s shot, or else in the north
Tribes of the shark and the octopus,
Mangroves, black hair on a boxer’s hand.
The founding fathers with their guns and bibles,
Botanist, whaler, added bones and names
To the land, to us a bridle
As if the id were a horse: the swampy towns
Like dreamers that struggle to wake,
Longing for the poets’ truth
And the lover’s pride. Something new and old
Explores its own pain, hearing
The rain’s choir on curtains of grey moss
Or fingers of the Tasman pressing
On breasts of hardening sand, as actors
Find their own solitude in mirrors,
As one who has buried his dead,
Able at last to give with an open hand.
88
Napier YMCA transformed and the Downtown Y is born