Volunteer of the Month

Rowena from Wakatipu Playcentre

Rowena has been a part of our centre for less than a year and made an immediate impact.  She’s a very motivated and motivating mumma.  Instantly becoming involved on the parent committee, and partaking in the first available PE1 course she could, Rowena has since become an advocate for the Playcentre adult education programme, taking the role of “Education Officer” in her stride and encouraging a number of other members to join the Playcentre Education programme. 

She is one of three dedicated members who make up our “Playground upgrade taskforce”, undertaking applications for grants, planning and creating mock ups of the space, hosting events to present the ideas to our members and collating feedback on these.  The taskforce was a larger group to begin with but volunteers have dwindled, so a lot more work than they originally anticipated I’m sure, but Rowena is an invaluable member on that team. 

In addition, she sourced, negotiated cost and delivery, and herself did the majority of the install of climb-proofing material for our outdoor fence, during session and in her own free time.  Same for rabbit proofing, arranging a working bee with our members and getting this mammoth job completed. 

Her tireless work has secured us a most beneficial opportunity with the Level Group who donated and installed outdoor heaters and a tradie corner for our centre, during which time Rowena was a main contact for the project.  This project was featured live on the morning show in September with over 5 mins of interview time with our president who spoke about Playcentre and featured over our socials and our local news.  Rowena has even wrote a children’s book about the whole experience, which our tamariki are loving.  Rowena has since been working on hosting a working bee for our centre this term, meanwhile holding down education officer role, supporting our adult education programme to the point where we are hosting PE3 and PE4 this coming term. 

And finally Rowena has brought an opportunity to us to collaborate with a group of local high school students, who have now committed to and begun work refurbishing our outdoor playhouse.  These students have resources that would take us a long time to fundraise for and are making a valuable contribution to our space, and our sessions with the relationships we and our tamariki are creating with a group of bright and engaging teenagers.

We are so grateful to Rowena for her commitment to our centre and whanau, and would love to acknowledge her input with a nomination for volunteer of the month.