The Randwick Park Community in Manurewa is known for their neighbourhood development, innovation, and proactive approaches - especially when the going gets tough!
With the COVID-19 lockdown levels beginning to impact on their community, on 24 March 2020 Urban Neighbours of Hope (UNOH) Community Leader, Dave Tims, contacted the Randwick CLD worker, Jessica Gosche, and Community Operations Community Advisor, Chislane Bourke, with an idea.
Dave began by saying:
"I think we are experiencing a new normal - will the world ever be the same again? "
The idea was to set up a 'Street Facebook page' to encourage engagement and to run competitions during the next four weeks of Level 4 lockdown - crazy photos, TikTok videos, colouring, even 'creative pancakes'.The Street page advised they were going to drop off fliers that evening, in the hope of encouraging and supporting other streets in the community to do the same, starting with people they knew on each of these streets.
They identified the need to purchase the resources for the competitions urgently, before the Level 4 lockdown began, as well as the need to have someone to do the administration.This person would run each Street page for the next four weeks, they would run the competitions, and they would drop off fliers and prizes (in letter boxes - in keeping with the lockdown distancing rules).The aim was to build lasting connections between neighbours during this tough time with the vision that, when the lockdown levels were lowered, these neighbours would hopefully continue to connect.
One of the events run by Urban Neighbours of Hope was a chalk 'self portrait' competion
As the Randwick Community is in partnership with the CLD Programme, the Randwick CLD Working Group and Advisor were able to quickly assist Dave with the resourcing to action his community idea, which is proving to be a great success.
Also, Annie, the administration worker, had attended the Community Operations-funded digital storytelling workshop run at Manu Tukutuku, which helped develop her video skills.
The link below is an article published on Daily Encourager on the 4th April 2020 capturing great connection activities in response to the COVID-19 lockdown period: