January 26, 2023
Kia ora koutou,
It’s the New Year and the world is starting up again, I hope you can find some time this year to get involved with some of what’s going on here in Houghton Valley. Here is something to whet your appetite ..
Coastal Communities and Climate Change
Sunday 29 January, 3 – 4.30 pm
At this public meeting, Wellington City Council’s Climate Change Advisors will be updating our South Coast Communities on their progress on developing climate change impact assessments and management. Anyone interested is invited, but the meeting is of particular importance to those of you who live close to the coast.
The meeting will be held at the Wellington South Baptist Church Hall, 284 The Parade, Island Bay. More details on the attached invitation.
Hopefully we will get to see progress on the Bloomberg Global Mayors Challenge, where the impact of climate change is being modelled on a digital twin of Wellington City.
Koha Coffee
Come along to the first Koha Coffee of the year and catch up with friends and neighbours. Koha Coffee is still not back to a regular monthly event, but is currently being hosted by people wanting to get together to plan other events as well as a general community catch-up. This time the Seeds-to-Feeds planning group will be hosting, and furthering the plans for our community dinner in March (see below).
If you are interested in hosting a Koha Coffee morning (or more than one) please email admin@houghtonvalley.org.nz and we can work something out.
Houghton Valley Progressive Association Meeting
Sunday 12 February, 1 – 4 pm
The upcoming General Meeting for the HVPA will be in two parts:
Firstly, Katie Sharp from WREMO will talk about running a couple of Emergency Preparedness workshops in Houghton Valley. These include a 1 hour weekday evening session focussing on household preparedness, and a 2 hour weekend afternoon session at Houghton Valley School, familiarising ourselves with what is at our Community Emergency Hub and how to co-ordinate a wider community response, should it be necessary. We can ask Katie questions and discuss the best time for running the workshop, and what else we can do as a community to increase our general resilience.
Secondly, we are going to have a working bee at the hall doing what we can to tick off items on our maintenance list, including washing down the outside, clearing gutters, trimming trees growing close to the hall, cleaning areas inside that are not covered by regular cleaning, replacing light tubes etc. Most of the gardening work has now been done but there are still a few corners that could be worked on if that is what you like doing. Please come along and have a bit of fun caring for our Community Hall, it deserves all the TLC it can get!
We will put out a Facebook Group event invite with more details, otherwise contact admin@houghtonvalley.org.nz. And of course, for our members and supporters, there will be the usual email in the week beforehand.
Seeds to Feeds
This year we are planning a dinner at the Community Hall on Sunday, March 12, from 5.30 pm.
Leone, our wonderful cook from last year (and last Spring) is planning more delicious dishes on the theme of Haewai Harvest Festival. So please save the date for another fun community event! The planning team are getting well practised at this (it’s the 4th year now!) but we’d still love other people to join in with preparations, because actually that part is just as much fun … ideas of how you can get involved include:
- Growing some salad items over the next few weeks, or contributing already growing produce that you will have ready;
- Getting together to make some fun cushion covers for Op Shop cushions (the hall seats are rather hard);
- Giving your Christmas icicle lights another airing to liven up the hall lighting;
- Helping on the day with foraging, preparing the meal or setting up the hall;
- Recommending a musician to add to the ambiance.
If you can help or have any other ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Contact admin@houghtonvalley.org.nz.
Update on the hall
We managed to reach our target of $15,000 for our Givealittle Campaign to raise funds for re-roofing part of our hall. We really appreciate how you all have rallied around to help!
We have kept the campaign open as the reality of building quotes is rather sobering, and much more than we expected. So if you still wanted to donate something, you still can. However, we will be applying for funding as well to make sure we have enough to cover all contingencies and leave enough in the kitty to sort out other things that need fixing.
Playground Progress
The HVPA meeting cum playground design party last December was a great success, with over 25 adults and children coming for a picnic lunch and to contribute to an ideas brainstorm about what is important to us and what is needed in our playground. Adam facilitated, Sarah from Seeds-to-Feeds supplied the fabulous gazebo, HVPA the bread rolls and Grant the foraged salad, with a few extras from the community, including the Tod children’s lemonade stand that raised about $20 and was donated to Seeds-to-Feeds. Ngā mihi everyone for helping make the event so enjoyable!
Tomorrow, a small working group will get together and start on a design brief that incorporates themes of wind and water (and their Māori gods), local plants and wildlife, the history of the place and our buried creek, (which was may have been used as a playground for hundreds of years before it was buried), as well as practical elements such as shade and shelter.
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