Kia ora e te whānau, if you have enjoyed a birthday in the last month or have new additions to your whānau, congratulations and here is to wishing you all good health and prosperity for the year ahead.

As April approaches our thoughts are on the forthcoming tītī season. We wish whānau who are going to the islands a safe and bountiful journey.

As well as the usual round of hui and day-to-day mahi the last month has seen us involved in a number of other activities including the Enviroschools Project and hosting a school group from the United States of America at Takutai o Te Tītī Marae.

As you may be aware we had a dangerous buildings notice placed on our old offices in Palmerston Street. This was followed by a potentially earthquake prone building status notification. As recommended in the engineers report, we have now removed the parapet and chimney and have steel banded a section of the front wall. The good news is that we have had both these notices removed and we are currently exploring options to utilise this building.

Visitors to the estuary

Over the past month we have had several visits from dolphins. These majestic performers never fail to attract the crowds as word quickly spreads round the town that the dolphins are in the estuary.

This spectacular picture was taken by Lionel Benjamin a photographer from Invercargill.

Three of our recent visitors.

Three of our recent visitors.

Communication

We are looking at ways to improve our communications with whānau and as such we are exploring different mediums to get the word out there about what is going on. This has come about after several hints about the volume of email traffic we generate.

One of the things we have done is to create an opportunities page on Facebook. This page will have details of any opportunities for our members such as scholarships, bird transfers, vacancies for representatives on various boards and much more. These links will take you to the pages: http://www.facebook.com/OrakaAparimaRunakaPanui.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Oraka-Aparima-Runaka-opportunity-pages/1615071675378752?pnref=lhc.recent.

In the interim we will continue to send you emails, however if you no longer wish to receive emails please let us know.