Two years on from Cyclones Hale and Gabrielle, cyclone recovery funding has assisted individuals and communities to recover and provided ongoing benefits for people in affected areas.
Along with coordinating recovery efforts with councils and government, rural sector and community agencies, the Wairarapa Recovery Office WRO has distributed over $400,000 of funding to support a range of initiatives in impacted areas.
“This has included grants for practical support such as repairs to community and recreational facilities and a farm fencing repair scheme. Funding has also helped bring communities together and get people off-farm for a break, through grants for events such as comedy nights and community planting days, and providing pickleball equipment for rural community halls,” said WRO Programme Manager Simon Taylor.
Funding has included grants and training for organisations working to support impacted individuals and communities.
“Rural Support Trust (RST) Wairarapa received funding for a rural nurse to provide health checks and support at farming and community events, and for emergency survival kits to ensure the safety of their teams when working in remote areas.
“We’ve also assisted The Kitchen Fairies with the care packages they provide to rural families in need, and funded Red Cross Psychological First Aid courses to offer additional training to groups who support people in the community following an emergency event.”
RST Wairarapa Area Coordinator Sarah Donaldson said the funding had made a big difference to people and communities in impacted areas.
“The fencing repair scheme allowed a number of property owners to start, progress, or finish repairing cyclone-damaged fences that much faster, making the task a bit less daunting, and taking some of the workload and financial pressure off. It also boosted morale for those farmers to know that people were still thinking of them and aware of the ongoing effect of the cyclones on them and their livelihood.
“The funding has allowed us and other organisations to assist more people and provided resources to support our ongoing work. It’s also hard to overestimate the benefits of the funded social and wellbeing events in allowing people to get off their properties and forget about the challenges facing them for a day or evening.”
The Kitchen Fairies co-founder Amy Jones said their funding grant had not only contributed to the cost of care package ingredients and catering for community events, it had allowed the group to purchase kitchen appliances and utensils, including a freezer to allow them to make meals in bulk.
“Having access to funding like this is critical in helping rural communities to recover after adverse events such as Cyclone Gabrielle. We weren’t an established organisation when the cyclone hit, so trying to continue what we started that week has been made possible by the grant.”
Funding has also been used to donate emergency resources to isolated communities to better equip them to respond to future emergency events. The donated resources include AEDs (defibrillators), water tanks, emergency first aid supplies and solar energy systems for community halls and marae. They also include shipping containers of resources for communities in locations that are likely to be cut off immediately after an emergency or adverse weather event.
“These resources will provide ongoing benefits for our remote communities in building resilience for future disasters, and supporting their wider emergency preparedness activities.”
Find out more about some of these activities, including the emergency resource container initiative and the AEDs donated to isolated communities.
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