Have you got a neighbourhood Community Response Plan?
When a natural disaster strikes, we may need to take care of ourselves for up to three days before help can arrive. Are you ready? A Community Response Plan is designed to help your community understand local hazards and the risks involved, know when to take action, and help you and your family prepare to survive, and help others around you.
Ōtumoetai has done theirs. See what their Community Response Plan looks like.
Check out where a Community Led Centre is. A CLC is an alternative to people’s own homes, friends or other family homes, or Civil Defence Centre. People could go to these places to get information and basic amenities in an event. They can be identified by signage when they are open.
Neighbourhood Support has a template for your street group where you can put in information about who lives near you, who might need help, what useful skills you might have in your street group and a checklist for what you might need in an emergency. Check it out!
Help grow your neighbourhood
Helping out in your neighbourhood
What can you do to make life more fun, connected and interesting in your neighbourhood?
Hold a street barbecue:
You could host a street barbecue - especially as the weather warms up and we’re all enjoying Daylight Saving. Pop a note into your neighbours’ letterboxes with a date and time and everyone brings something to share. Many of our streets do this regularly.
Build a fruit and vege stand:
You could build a fruit and vege stand for your street, or use your Neigbourhood Support Street Group email to let your neighbours know you have surplus to share from your garden.
There’s some great ideas for getting a fruit and vege stand going at https://lovefoodhatewaste.co.nz/how-to-set-up-a-community-fruit-and-vegetable-stand/
There are plans at https://thisnzlife.co.nz/step-by-step-instructions-build-a-cute-as-a-button-fruit-and-vegetable-stand-part-2-of-2/
Swap plants and cuttings:
Have you grown too many seedlings? Get together with your neighbours and swap seedlings or cuttings from your favourite plants. Neighbours around Horoipia Park did this and it got the whole neighbourhood involved.
Hold a pot luck tea:
Suggest to your neighbours that you all get together, bring along your favourite dish and encourage those from other cultures to make a favourite from their homeland. It doesn’t matter if the dishes clash - that’s half the fun, and you’ll discover some fellow foodies among your neighbours.
What other ideas do you have?
Email us at info@wbopns.org.nz and let us know what you’re doing to brighten up your neighbourhood.