Te Takere staff recognised a community need and are providing a free service to help people access their vaccination passes. Photo / Nikki Carroll
Te Takere staff recognised a community need and are providing a free service to help people access their vaccination passes. Photo / Nikki Carroll
Te Takeretanga o Kura-hau-pō has stepped up to provide another free essential service to the local community, especially for those struggling to access their vaccination pass.
On November 17 the Government introduced My Vaccine Pass which is an official record of a person's Covid-19 vaccination status.
The pass could be paper or digital and allows access to places within New Zealand that will require proof of vaccination under the new Covid-19 Protection Framework.
Te Takere's community engagement librarian Pam Coleman said the library had been inundated with requests from people needing help with their Covid vaccination passes.
"Many of them don't have the required ID, computers, email accounts, or confidence to set up the accounts," said Coleman.
Jennifer Walton, services to older adults' librarian, and Leala Faleseuga, digital inclusion coordinator, are leading the team running the four desks providing assistance to the large number of people coming in each day.
Awesome team work from library staff to make sure all members of our community can access their vaccination passes. Photo / Nikki Carroll
"We had an inkling this community need might arise," said Faleseuga, "and after the first couple of days we recognised that a separate area needed to be set up so we just got onto it."
Staff have been really flexible in terms of changing shifts to accommodate the extra service, as well as sourcing and making resources.
Walton said helping each person is very individualised. "Some have no devices, email or ID … some just need help with the process … some only need help to print/laminate the pass."
On average each customer takes about 10 minutes to deal with, and since November 22 library staff have helped between 100 to 150 people a day.
The demand has been so high that Te Takere are now offering evening sessions on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, from 5pm to 7pm.
"This is especially for those people who can't get in during the day because they work, or because they need support when calling the 0800 helpline," said Walton.
Faleseuga said feedback from the community has been really positive, with many people saying they had been so worried and feeling really anxious about the process of accessing the vaccination pass.
Te Takere is part of a New Zealand-wide library partnership concept that has been created to help communities build resilience while dealing with the impact of Covid.
"Providing this service fitted our roles as part of this partnership to a tee," said Faleseuga, "especially as a lot of our outreach programmes have had to be paused during level 2."
Help accessing your vaccination pass is available Monday to Friday, during normal opening hours, at Levin, Foxton and Shannon libraries.
