Rotorua's East Side residents are being encouraged to go to their local parks.
Every Tuesday and Thursday for the next 10 weeks East Side Fun Days are being held to strengthen communities and create opportunities for Rotorua whānau.
The events, led by Healthy Families Rotorua, are to help entice whānau to use community areas.
Mariana Vercoe from Healthy Families Rotorua is passionate about the project and the impacts it will have on the East.
“Our first point is generally getting people moving for physical health benefits. But we’ve noticed it’s a real way of getting the community engaged and socially connected, and being able to bring the community together for positive occasions rather than the negative.”
For Vercoe, the series of family days is a use-it-or-lose-it scenario, when it comes to Rotorua’s’ parks and reserves.
“After last year’s proposal from the council of removing some of the reserves, we want to make sure that we’re using the reserves and activating them so that they don’t get taken away as green spaces.”
The East Side Family Fun Day events include simple activities like colouring in, chalk drawing, board games and toy stations, as well as access to bicycles and a sausage sizzle. The afternoon event also offers the chance to whizz up your own smoothie on the blender bike and bring old and young together in the greenspaces.
Vercoe said, “Healthy Families Rotorua has been around for the last nine years and our job is around activating communities for better health and wellbeing outcomes, whatever that looks like for them - it’s our job to bring together people for a common cause.”
Healthy Families Rotorua aims not only to get community spaces used more but to allow whānau to reconnect with Māori traditions and values in a contemporary context.
“Another big part of our mahi is around mātauranga Māori regeneration or Māori systems return. So it’s bringing back our old ways of living or the way we used to do things and how those can be applied in today’s day for health and wellbeing outcomes.”
While Fun Day events are scheduled in the East Side in the coming months, the aim to is encourage whānau to get active regardless.
“Hopefully the smaller communities where we’re going, they will be able to go there on their own and take their kids, their tamariki, their babies or even their koeke, the elders to go there and use the spaces.”
She attributed the events’ popularity to their ability to connect people, saying, “I think it’s seen more as opportunities to bring their kids to come and play and meet other people and just be surrounded by other families”.
