Ōtara-Papatoetoe Local Board I Te Poari a Rohe o Ōtara-Papatoetoe

A Town centre revamp

Our town centre is the core/central part of our community, and is well known for it's Saturday Markets. We get visitors from all over Auckland, especially for the Markets. I would like to invite the Local Board, to start looking at the possibility of improving the physical look of our Town Centre. Why is it that other communities, in the wealthy areas deserve to have their town centres renewed, and we can't? We also deserve the best!

Volunteering in a new "normal" needs support

COVID-19 has changed the volunteering landscape. The likely scenario for NGOs reliant on volunteers will be a short fall of people unable to volunteer as in pre-COVID days. With seniors [over 65yrs] being the back bone of many of our volunteer activities in the community now unable [unwilling through health fears?] to undertake their usual roles, this will leave a big gap in the ability of NGOs to deliver services at pre-COVID levels. An increasing number of people will also be subsisting on a much reduced income will be accessing community services in larger numbers and the community groups stepping up to support them will need additional people to support the delivery of those needs – these are generally volunteers. The increasing numbers of unemployed people will also be looking to contribute, retrain and wanting to ensure their own good mental health will need support in sourcing community voluntary activities that will best meet their needs. We need to support our community organisations to relook at their volunteer involving programmes and practices, how they recruit, support, identify and allocate voluntary tasks, ensuring the health and wellbeing of both the recipients and the volunteers. Volunteering Auckland is well placed to support the volunteering needs of both the person looking to contribute and those community groups needing support in their volunteer engagement processes and practices. Our database can also track referrals to needs by suburb and by local board. We are able to operate regionally and virtually. Volunteering will increasingly become a way to ensure a resilient community.

Bathrooms/Parks

We think that we should invest into adding more parks around our community & with those parks ensure that we add bathrooms around those areas.

The sports activities build in parks/reserves should reflect its Community. Install poles so that groups can set up nets for Volleyball.

Adopt the food scrap bins like in Papakura

It will be great to see the Papakura initiative extend to Otara as I see a lot of food waste being chucked in rubbish bins as families are not familiar with proper composting or don't know how to go about reducing food waste.