Notes from the most recent open forum
As promised, we sent out the notes from the most recent open forum. Those who attended brought up key issues facing their organisations and the sector at the moment, and Wendy and Sara fed back from their first CERA Community Well-being Planning Group meeting.
Next OVTRK forum: LURP focus
There is one particular item that we would like to highlight, and that's the next OVTRK open forum, which will focus on the CERA Preliminary Draft Land Use Recovery Plan (LURP). This plan under the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Strategy has enormous statutory clout in terms of statutory directions, interventions under the CER Act and the power to change regulations and circumvent many existing statutory and regulatory provisions under other acts. We have interpreted the kaupapa of the plan as aligning with the statutory responsibility of CERA to restore the social, economic, cultural and environmental well-being of greater Christchurch communities. The Preliminary Draft LURP will be out for formal consultation until 22 April. Full and summary versions are available at www.developingchoices.org.
We have decided to hold the next forum on Sunday 20 April 2pm - 4:30pm at the YWCA (12 Hereford Street) as a special OVTRK workshop to coordinate responses to the LURP. We would love for your organisation to share feedback on this plan, and will send out an update after the forum.
Great piece of research
We recently came across a great read: Building Community Resilience: Learning from the Canterbury earthquakes, a report put together by Canterbury District Health Board (Community and Public Health), Mental Health Foundation, University of Otago, and Quigley and Watts Ltd. The report looks at what increases a community's ability to adapt after a disaster, especially from the perspective of post-disaster communities themselves. The report uses six key case studies focusing on Lyttelton, Shirley, Inner City East, Marae Communities, Migrant & Refugee Communities, and Christchurch Community House.
Summary of upcoming events of interest (see sidebar)
On the side-bar of the blog, we've added a list of upcoming events that have been highlighted as being important to the sector. One Voice Te Reo Kotahi is trying to organise to have at least one person from our organising group present at each meeting so that we can communicate important sector information that we think would benefit the NGOs on our registry.
That's all for now, everyone.
Cheers,
The OVTRK Team
