It has been three months since Cyclone Gabrielle, but for some in the worst affected areas, there is still a lot of work to do to get back to anything resembling normal.
When Rural Support asked for help in the Tararua District, , Whanganui Collegiate students answered. This is not the first time the school has helped out. After a Call to Arms on their Collegiate Weekend in February, parents donated thousands of dollars of much-needed items to flood-affected areas.
At 7am on a frosty Wednesday 10 students and Housemaster Selwyn Hodges set off from Whanganui to the region to meet Rural Support Tararua’s Simon Hales, who is coordinating help on farms that are still feeling the effect of the recent flooding. Helping aligns with the school’s five pillars and ties in perfectly with the environmental stewardship and service elements of being one of New Zealand’s three Round Square schools.
The students ended up at Ora Station on the East Coast, 10 minutes from the ocean to help clean up fences that line the rivers and waterways. The students worked from 10am-5pm on Wednesday and then drove to farmers Matthew and Sarah Gibbs’s home where Fonterra put on a barbeque. Even though they were tired from a hard day’s work, the students got up at 4.30am to help milk cows and then we headed back to Ora Station to complete the job, returning to school around 5pm.
Rural Support’s Jane Tylee supports farmers to work through the devastation of the flooding. They are now starting to see the true impact of the storm, and it is having a devastating effect on farmers’ mental health. Tylee has helped set up and received funding for the Rural Support programme that has employed Hales as a coordinator of the work on the farms.
