Thanks to all who participated in the first Network North 2022 event, Building Blocks. We had a great turnout with 30 people in attendance, representing at least 23 organizations involved in environmental work across North Auckland.

This first event involved connecting, communicating and co-creating and was co-facilitated by Cissy Rock from Community Think and by a representative of Kaipātiki Project.

After an energetic round of introductions and communication, we dove into the co-creating part of the evening. Circling the room in small groups, we contributed new ideas and fleshed out the details of some existing ideas onto 13 extra large blank pages. 

Two topics stood out as clearly important and urgent to the majority of the people in attendance:

1. Behaviour change

2. Engaging with mana whenua and operating in a multicultural setting

The intention of Network North going forward, is to plan and facilitate events based on the ideas and outcomes of this evening.

Discussions on the evening brought about more clarity on what Network North is and what we hope to achieve with it:

1. Our hope is to encompass a broad scope of environmental work (climate action/ carbon zero, transport, infrastructure, zero waste/ circular economy, native forest/ bush/ wildlife restoration work, clean waters, food growing, composting, etc.).

2. Specific focus on the 5 North Auckland Local Boards.

3. This network has a dedicated (Auckland Council funded) facilitator for 2022 (Kaipātiki Project).

4. We aim to create shared learning opportunities.

5. We aim to create time and space to actively collaborate.

6. We will facilitate planned and focussed events (not casual networking).

The Online Resource created from this event can be found here.

-posted on the 19/04/2022