Welcome and introductions to the Kaka project -read this first

Kia ora whanau! I'm Turi Park, and my wife Jane and kids Georgia [9] and Jack [7] live on Hoggard St. I've been involved with the Kaka Project and Vogelmorn Community Group Trust [VCG] for a year or so. I work in the visual arts and design. I think this area and the vibrant souls that live here are beaut! Great fun to be dreaming and scheming with you all about what we can contribute to make this place properly hum. I'm really keen this year to see 'the Kaka' look beyond Brooklyn village, especially along the Ridgway to Vogeltown, Mornington and Kingston. Brooklyn has great amenities to improve... Further afield need community facilities, fullstop. I look forward to seeing you all soon.

Tena Koe. I live on Harland St with my family. My children attend St Bernard's school in Taft Street, and I sit on the school's board. I also chair the local residents group in Brooklyn. I'm really pleased to be involved in the Kaka project, because it brings to the surface a large number of issues from the community.

Hi
I live on Washington Ave and have been part of the Kaka Project Steering Group. Over the years I've lived in Brooklyn I've been involved with local preschool, school and community activities and am currently secretary for the Brooklyn Resource Centre.

Greetings
I live and have lived for the past 15 years at the Kingston end of the Ridgeway with my partner and (at the moment) 2 dogs and a cat. In past years we have had a large number of different additional family members living with us including AFS students from around the world. I'm a lawyer in private practice and a folk musician and choral singer in my leisure time, while Kaye Reardon, my partner, runs a gardening business from our place (Grow From Here). We both enjoy growing things and have a fully organic garden which (wind permitting) provides many treasures. We love Wellington and living in this area. We want to keep the wonderful Vogelmorn hall and help contribute to the community.

Welcome Mary! Great to read about you!

Hi all, I’ve lived on Connaught Terrace for the past 10 years with my wife Katherine Dean. We now have a 3yr old, Felix, and a nearly 1yr old, Oliver. I'm the current Treasurer of the Brooklyn Residents Association and a member of the Kaka Project Steering Group. It's great to see energy and ideas from the community.

Mary are you able to email me? I am super keen to find a family lawyer. thanks! I’m [email protected] ( [email protected] )

I am just visiting your group. I am learning about working with Loomio and hoping to use it in a similar situation of attempting to gather support for Byron Shire Councils Affordable Housing Strategy 2009, that I was part of creating as a member of the community, and which is proving difficult to implement.

Welcome Jed to the group. Your enthusiasm for the project in Australia sounds very strong. It is amazing that you have taken the chance of post here. The Kaka project is a formal development phase between a suburban community in Wellington and the local council. Until now, there has been little concerted development with the council for the suburb, so the project is quite unusual. Of course many features of the project are familiar to us. The groups involved are drawn directly from the community. We have spent around a year gathering submissions from the community over two phases. We are now feeding into a council development plan amongst other suburbs and projects from the city. We are on the cusp of formalizing something from the group to put to the council. Loomio has not been useful in gathering feedback from the community, but has been excellent at coordinating amongst the team behind the project. Hope this helps. There may be better examples of mobilization on Loomio than here. Feel free to keep posting.

It has become more of a necessity than enthusiasm here. People are leaving because of our housing crisis or staying in housing stress (over 30% of income on housing) or housing crisis (over 50%). Tourism out of control is one of the main reasons. I have been involved with attempts to get the council working on solutions and we have even had all councilors on side at times, but the staff mostly make suitable noises then do nothing or even undermine the official strategy.

Kaka project for me slightly upsets the routine roles between citizens, elected councillors and officials. Elected officials are slightly uneasy that the community has devised what is best for themselves. Councillors are looking for vested interest from the project before other priorities, where that may not be certainty. And the community is trying to work amongst itself to settle values and priorities from within existing relationships for something new. I think it works best when there is strong indeterminacy between all the participants, who will then be drawn into something new.

Our Affordable Housing Strategy was a similar thing. It arose from a council initiated broad based community committee. A big mistake we made was not continuing the committee after about 10 years of meetings. We thought once it had all been agreed and rubber stamped, that it would just happen. Our energy and attention seems to have been needed to keep the momentum happening. I am attempting to get the committee back together after a 7 year break and little progress on the strategy.

I am going now and will come back in a year and see what happened and let you know how I went with that. A little exchange between NZ and OZ (NSW) is a good thing, hopefully.