Kairo Jacobs from Drowning Prevention Auckland talks with students at Moana Nui Kiwa Leisure Centre in Mangere who are using their grant money from Auckland Airport to support Kai Moana Gathering Program. Photo / Greg Bowker
Kairo Jacobs from Drowning Prevention Auckland talks with students at Moana Nui Kiwa Leisure Centre in Mangere who are using their grant money from Auckland Airport to support Kai Moana Gathering Program. Photo / Greg Bowker
The Herald is profiling 12 charities awarded $12,000 each from Auckland Airport’s Twelve Days of Christmas campaign. Each grant is made up of $10,000 donated by generous travellers who placed unwanted currency into money boxes dotted around the airport’s terminals in 2023, and as a cherry on top, Auckland Airport has gifted each charity an additional $2000.
The city being surrounded by water is one of Auckland’s treasured features.
But with 17 preventable drowning deaths recorded across the city each year, on average, there’s a darker side to our beautiful aquatic environments.
Drowning Prevention Auckland (DPA) is on a mission to change those statistics through preventative education programmes to keep people in our diverse communities safer in, on and around the water.
“You can get caught up in the black-and-white statistics [regarding] drowning, but these are real people and preventable deaths,” says chief executive Nicola Keen-Biggelaar.
Auckland’s Māori communities have been a big focus this year, evidenced by the launch of the charity’s Kai Moana Gathering programme.
Water Safety NZ recorded 102 preventable drowning fatalities among Māori over the five years to 2022, 10 of which were in Auckland and predominantly occurred when people were diving for kai moana.
The new programme has been co-designed with Te Ahiwaru Trust, an iwi located on the edge of the Manukau Harbour.
Kai Moana Gathering Program students take part in a lesson run by Drowning Prevention Auckland at Moana Nui Kiwa Leisure Centre in Mangere. The program is being supported by grant money from Auckland Airport. Photo / Greg Bowker
“Our work with the trust brings it all home, as its community has lost many to drowning in all sorts of water environments. So, it’s meaningful to give back to the community through this programme, [which has a focus on] the ways Māori engage with the water and the ways they are most at risk,” Keen-Biggelaar says.
Delivery of the programme is aligned with the iwi’s tikanga and how they want their rangitahi [young people] to engage with the programme.
“For our pilot programme, we took a group of young people out to do an open-water dive at Goat Island. Unfortunately, the conditions on the scheduled day were not safe for diving and the location had to be changed to somewhere safer,” Keen-Biggelaar says.
“Everyone was hugely disappointed, but it was a wonderful learning opportunity, because sometimes the pressure comes on Māori to dive for kai moana to provide for their whānau, and they will take risks that may lead to preventable drowning.”
Keen-Biggelaar says participants will leave the programme understanding how to assess risks and make good judgements; how to rescue someone if they get into difficulty when diving; that they should always go diving with someone; how to read weather conditions; and with information about shallow-water blackouts.
Auckland Airport’s Twelve Days of Christmas Campaign has come at the perfect time, as DPA is looking to expand the programme beyond the pilot phase.
Auckland Airport chief corporate services officer Melanie Dooney says the $12,000 grant will support DPA’s goal to deliver 12 Kai Moana Gathering programmes for groups of 25 people across South Auckland.
“We are delighted these groups will receive the benefits of this targeted programme and that the grant will help DPA in its aim to keep New Zealanders safe in, on and around the water,” Dooney says.
DPA also provides water safety programmes within schools, workplaces where employees work around the water and to Pasifika and Asian communities.
Keen-Biggelaar says drowning is a preventable fatality.
“The reason we all do what we do is that these are human lives,” she says. “We believe that [engaging in recreation] around water is important for health and wellbeing. It’s important to keep yourself safe so that you have a great time with your family and come home.”
