North Canterbury News: August 03, 2023

NEWS
8 The North Canterbury News, August 3, 2023
Comcol North Canterbury celebrates 40 yrs
By SHELLEY TOPP
Comcol North Canterbury has marked
40 years of ‘‘creating better lives for our
community’’ at aspecial anniversary
event at the Rangiora college.
The celebration was held in the
college’s cafeteria recently with staff
and supporters attending and the
college’s first tutor, Dirk Zant, aspecial
guest.
The location of the event marked the
college’s humble starting point, in the
back of an old bike shed on land
opposite the Rangiora High School.
The college’s journey began in July
1983 after businessmen Tony Hall and
Alex Murray recognised a‘‘looming
crisis of high national unemployment’’
and wanted to do something locally to
mitigate the difficulties they believed
school leavers would face in North
Canterbury.
Tony says he was enormously proud of
establishing the college and what had
been achieved there.
‘‘It is all about people and whether
you sit inside and become an observer,
or do you want to become involved and
try and make adifference in people’s
lives.
‘‘We just decided we wanted to try and
make adifference,’’ he says.
Tony and Alex established the
Rangiora Enterprise Trust in
association with the Rangiora Borough
Council and based their new
educational organisation on the Scottish
Enterprise Trust to begin providing
training courses in horticulture and
beekeeping.
The new organisation met with
immediate success, attracting
Government funding for the training
programmes after which the Rangiora
Training Institute was formed in
collaboration with Rangiora High
Busy night ... Comcol North Canterbury students Daisy Jones, left, from North Loburn, and Molly Paterson from Woodend, serving food
at afunction held in Rangiora’s Comcol North Canterbury college cafeteria to celebrate the 40 year anniversary of Community Colleges
New Zealand’s journey which began in Rangiora.
PHOTO: SHELLEY TOPP
School and the community.
The initial organisation has seen
many changes, and now has five
colleges, including Rangiora,
Christchurch, Timaru, Dunedin and
Invercargill, under the Comcol New
Zealand banner.
However, the core ‘goal of
empowering people to gain work skills
and qualifications in hands­on learning
environments’’ remains the same,
Comcol North Canterbury’s project
support manager Cathy Batchelor says.
‘‘Our dedicated Comcol team of youth
coaches and support staff touch the lives
of close to 1000 young people and their
whānau each year, she says.
‘‘They work actively and intensively to
identify an individual's goals and the
best path to reach them.’’ Cathy says
guiding young people with tailored
support and practical tools such as
budgeting and parenting courses,
driver­licence training, and supporting
options for education, work­based
training and employment, is impactful.
‘‘Changing lives from adependence
trajectory to empowerment has many
positive effects for our communities.
Our mahi can be both challenging and
rewarding but we are here to change
lives for people, whānau and
community, for the better,’’ she says.
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