Summer Newsletter
This is one of the most exciting communications we’ve sent…because we have so much to share with you. It’s also our first ‘newsletter’ and marks a shift in our proactive communications.
We want to better connect with you – our community – so please have a read and let us know what you think. And even better, pass on to your contacts to sign up to the newsletter.
Our transformation
In the last couple of months, MCG has been through a transformation. This was an important direction by our Committee/Board to better represent our catchment and our community.
We’re adopting the rununga accepted spelling, which means we’ve replaced the ‘i’ with an ‘e’ and our catchment name will now align with the spelling used most commonly and supported by our local iwi: Manuherekia.
We started by doing a refresh of who we are and who we wanted to be with a visioning exercise, and this is what we came up with.
Check out our new vision, mission, goals and values:
Our vision
Our vision is to help create a thriving community with a sustainable, healthy and balanced environment. We do this by leading by example, being action-orientated and working closely with our community and partners.
Our mission
Our mission is to secure great water quantity and quality for future generations so that we have sustainable food and fibre production in our community. We work with our community to create amazing outcomes.
Our values
We have integrity, we care, we lead by example and are action-orientated and grounded, in fact we are visionary. We are custodians of our environment, and we value a healthy sustainable freshwater resource, we are approachable, and we listen, we persevere.
Our goals
We will understand our environment and our community, we will find solutions that meet our mission and vision, we will celebrate the wins so our community and the country share our journey and are inspired.
We then created a new identity that really showcases to everyone how we’re stepping up and into a new and exciting direction. The premise of our new look is a window into our catchment (the M acts as a window).
From there, we set about moving our website onto a new platform so that our community and stakeholders can more easily find information that’s important and relevant to them.
We’re thrilled with the outcome and know it’ll make access to useful data and insights, progress and celebrating our successes that much easier. If you have any feedback or thoughts on what you’d like on the website, we'd love to hear from you. Send us an email us here.
We’ve also created three factsheets – with more coming – to help summarise useful information into easy-to-read snapshots.
The first is an overview of our Group.
The second is a look into water in our catchment.
The third is a summary of our Catchment Management Plan and how it works within our catchment.
And finally, we’ve got ourselves onto Facebook. It’s still one of the main ways people, 18-65 years old, track community activities and keep in touch.
We’ve love you to like and follow us so we can keep you up to date on what’s happening in the catchment, upcoming events and so much more…
What’s been happening
Thomsons Catchment Project
Sign up to the Thomsons Catchment Project newsletter to find out what’s been happening with the new wetland. They have just planted 41,000 Carex plants… in just nine days. It’s pretty amazing.
Otago Regional Council feedback on draft land and water regional plan (LWRP)
On 27 October, drop-in sessions at the Ophir Peace Memorial Hall were hosted by Otago Regional Council. It was really good to see ORC staff and Councillors take the time to answer our community’s questions.
If you went along, then I hope you got the answers you were looking for. If you didn’t make it – then don’t worry, the MCG committee has met with ORC staff at two other meetings as well as the drop in session to work on the Catchment Management Plan being accepted as our flow scenario for the Manuherekia Rohe. MCG also gave online feedback to ORC regarding wider draft LWRP regulations.
There are region-wide rules which will impact on your business as well as the Manuherekia Rohe Chapter so it’s important you know what’s happening.
For further information on these draft provisions please visit : www.orc.govt.nz/plans-policies-reports/land-and-water-regional-plan/proposed-changes-to-rules-and-regulations
What’s coming up next
Having a new website is great, but we need people to know about it and use it. So, you’ll begin to see some Facebook adverts popping up encouraging people to pop onto our website and have a look, and to follow our Facebook page. It’s all part of our vision to build engagement with the community.
We’re also busy working on videos that we hope to use to promote the amazing work farmers and others in our community are already doing to nurture and support our environment. Watch this space!
