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July 2 2024
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Keeping hearts healthy u by Amy Fifita
Ruawai Kindergarten was recently awarded the Heart Foundation’s Pā-Harakeke Award, recognising the care centre’s approach to nutrition, physical activity and professional development in education.
Born to be strong
Recovering from a sports injury, Ashton Kareko decided to start building muscle, and after discovering his natural strength began competing in powerlifting …
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Teen gets her wings
After joining the Dargaville Aero Club in late 2022 and 20.6 flying hours later, Dani Lowe successfully achieved her first solo flight …
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“The Pā-Harakeke Award is the goldstandard achievement, and we have been sitting on that one for a long time. It has been a big journey, and a lot of work has been put into it,” said second-in-command Amelia Hilford. Former head teacher Teresa Robertson championed the programme until the end of 2023 when Amelia took charge of it. “It involves us eating healthy foods, keeping the children active and leading them through healthy eating. “The children love participating in all sorts of cooking and baking experiences and harvesting their food. To bring some culture to the kindergarten, we recently plucked a duck together. They all tasted a bit of it. To receive the two-year Healthy Heart Award, information and documentation are collected across two years. Any Early Childhood Education provider can sign up to be part of the Healthy Heart Award journey.
p Ruawai Kindergarten children and staff have been celebrating receiving the gold-standard PāHarakeke Award from the Heart Foundation
“Having our gardens and food forest with donations from the whānau, have allowed us to maintain it. We have a newly established team, and we are keeping up with the green-gold and beyond Enviroschools and Healthy Heart Award kaupapa.”
Fresh initiatives have been introduced like the compassion caterpillar acknowledges the children’s kindness. “Now we have competent and confident children who can emotionally regulate and socially react in meaningful and beautiful ways,” said head teacher Shanda Vaile. ¢
Rates rise curve flattened u by Andy Bryenton
New precinct for Mangawhai
Another new housing development is set to grow the population of Mangawhai, with a successful vote in open …
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Efforts to curb sharp rates rises have been the focus of the Kaipara District Council since early projections modelled a rates increase averaging 15% for households in 2024. A combination of cost-cutting, restructuring staff, slashing consultant’s fees and
analysing budgets saw this drop to 11% by the end of May. Now, the council has announced it has achieved a projected 8.9% increase, steady across all three years of the forthcoming Long Term Plan. “Smoothing the rates increase across the three years helps to make the rates
more affordable as best we can, without cutting our services and making sure we still get the work done we have committed to,” said mayor Craig Jepson. Final LTP deliberations will be held this week ahead of the plans official adoption as policy. ¢
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