Howick Museum – A special place

After looking through the one room/bedroom cottages made of soil and grass with a fireplace in the middle, you really must admire the stamina and courage of the people who formed the foundations of contemporary New Zealand.

Volunteers, including children dressed in costumes from the time, explained and demonstrated how life 170 years ago looked like – and it was not easy!

Despite the heavy rain, we enjoyed our trip to Howick.

A Day with families and children

Anna, our intern from Sweden, had an opportunity to look closer into family life within a natural environment  at Warkworth,  a small town north of Auckland . It was made possible thanks to supervisor  Stephanie Manuel,  Counsellor and  Community & Family Support Worker in Mahurangi Presbyterian Church.

It was a special day.
Using grass root social work with new  Islander  settlers  and learning about  their everyday problems and ways of helping them to solve issues.  A day of learning new skills and building friendships beyond culture and language.  It was the first such visit an initiation of our cooperation

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Korean/Asian Motherhood

14 March - Waitemata DHB meeting.  This time we listened to a lecture by Dr Aram Kim, Psychiatry registrar, talking about Korean and Asian way of pregnancy, childbirth and childrearing.

Until this lecture I only knew about the tradition of co-sleeping of parents and their children. I am a big fan of it but westernised Asian families avoid it. There is a law in China that children age 3 must attend fulltime Childcare. I have seen often in Auckland‘s parks, elderly Asians beautifully caring for their grandchildren. I have also been asking myself why young pregnant woman come back home to give birth. After this lecture, the puzzle was solved. Asian people respect and support the Universal Law of Attachment.  It was a very uplifting lecture.

PORSE HELO

10 March - meeting with PORSE team          
Similar to our Child Connection Trust, PORSE In Home Childcare and Training (NZ) primary value is to respect and fulfil the needs of children for secure attachment.
It can be easily achieved in small home based settlements
Home-based ECE currently represents 9% of the ECE sector but has been marginalised by the bigger players, at the expense of not having our babies and young children educated in home and community learning environments,
The Home Education Learning Organisation (HELO) l represents and advocate for home-based early childhood education (ECE) in the teacher-led sector. Child Connection Trust  supports HELO

Key Assets Fostering

07/08 March. Anna was given the opportunity to participate in training at Key Assets. It’s a leading independent fostering agency in NZ that provides training for foster parents.
Amongst other values, Key Assets want children to have a sense of belonging and security within a family environment.

 Their vision for children is:
•    Engagement – We encourage and enable children to have their voices heard.
•    Strengths Based – We use a strengths based approach to our work.
•    Achievement – We work with children to help them achieve.
•    Protection – We protect children.
It was a very valuable experience for our Swedish internship student Anna who works with foster care in Europe.  Child Connection Trust will work to expand our cooperation with Key Assets.

Bruce Lipton talk

05 March. An evening at NZ Chiropractic College.  It’s a full house!  Every time Bruce Lipton comes to talk in Auckland you need to come early to find a place. It’s good to be reminded that we live in a world born from an expansion of evolutionary consciousness, revealing itself right down to our DNA.  It is a world infused with the heart’s intelligence, a new understanding of love and an energy connection between all living systems. So let’s keep our “vibes” positive not only for ourselves but for everyone we know. Now is a critical period in planetary history.

Pasifica Festival

During Pasifica Western Springs Park was transformed into 11 Pacific Islands villages where we could experience the sights, sounds, tastes and colours of the Pacific. Each village had its own stage, market area, fale - the traditional meeting area where we could see demonstration of crafts or drumming lessons. This year Hawai joined first time to the Pacifica Festival family. It was amusing event!