WELCOME TO MSC
CHAIRPERSON’S REPORT 2009-2010
ROSS MEDER
The New Zealand Mountain Safety Council (MSC) was formed in 1965 in response to the increasing number of mountain, bush and firearms fatalities. The Council consists of 24 member organisations bringing together the collective perspectives, wisdom and shared purpose of those committed to outdoor safety and continues to exist to enable safe participation in outdoor activities and environments.
MSC’S CONSTITUTION INCLUDES OUR MISSION TO:
Enable people to participate safely in land-based outdoor recreation activities
Foster positive support for outdoor safety in the community
Promote the development and maintenance of national outdoor safety standards for land-based activities. MISSION
PROgRAMME SNAPSHOTS: outdoor safety Code
Since the launch of the Outdoor Safety Code (OSC) for the summer of 2009/2010 it has been making significant progress towards being established across the land based outdoor sector as the overarching set of safety messages aimed at both kiwis and international tourists alike. The OSC was established as a set of five generic safety rules that can be used across any land based activity to reduce risks. The OSC is a
Mountain Safety Council led programme with funding from NZ Search and Rescue, DOC, & NZ Walking Access Commission, and is supported by TIANZ, TNZ, The NZ Police, ACC, MOT, and SPARC. An exciting new development with this programme is the build of a centralised safety message portal, inclusive of land, water & snow safety organisations.
MSC is project managing with funding from NZSAR and thorough consultative process is underway. The launch is planned for early November 2010.
BEDE EAgLE
Marketing and Communications
firearms and hunts programme
Research has indicated that approximately 50% of rural Maori in northern Te Urewera, who possess a firearm, are unlicensed. This has prompted MSC to propose to Police, a firearms safety programme specifically delivered at marae, in rural Maori communities, throughout
all New Zealand. In response Police have provided additional funding over the next two years for whakatupato ki te mau pu (take care with firearms). Local Iwi will be recruited and trained as MSC firearms safety instructors. The development of courses, establishing contacts and recruiting local firearms instructors is already underway.
MIkE SPRAy
Programme Manager Firearms & HUNTS
BUSHCRAFT
This year has also been significant with the release of the 2010 version of Mountain Safety Council’s Bushcraft Manual. After thorough consultation with our external stakeholders, technical advisors and committees we revised all chapters for content, photos, layout and design. We hope people enjoy the fresh look and quality information.
CHRIS TEWS
Programme Manager Bushcraft and Outdoor Leader
This year we have revamped the Crystal Ball, our bi annual avalanche periodical to become a self funded, full colour 40 page magazine. We are delighted with the result and the huge support for the magazine. Thank you to all the contributors and sponsors. We look forward to building more awareness through this strong foundation.
ANDREW HOBMAN Programme Manager Avalanche and Alpine
As you will all be aware the last 12 months have been difficult, and as an organisation we have been affected by a continuing demand for resources, but with a reduced, or static, level of support in terms of funding from the various agencies we have traditionally relied on to do the work.
Over the last year there have been some significant events that impact, or could do, on the MSC role within the Outdoors sector.
We have been consulted on the Departmental Review of Adventure Tourism, along with a number of coronial inquests of some significant events. Out of these will come a range of findings, and MSC will have a role to determine the messages that need to be communicated to outdoors users, and opportunity to work with other like organisations, to introduce the recommendations. MSC strives to meet the strategic goals of education at community level and through the above on a more global perspective. With reduced funding, we have had to spend considerable time looking at savings we can make across the organisation, and one area that has been impacted greatly is the Branch network. There has been some rationalisation at this level, based on outputs. The real impact of these changes is yet to be measured, but the Exec will work hard through the national office staff, to support this very important aspect of our work.We have been contracted to provide work in a number of research areas either independently or in partnership with member organisations, or Government agencies. We have received some targeted funding to allow us to update and
publish the Bushcraft Manual so that the safety message is available to another group of outdoors users. We have progressed talks with Skills Active and NZOIA, to ensure that there is a clear pathway for qualifications, and a process to track and confirm currency of providers. We have, by being involved in the Departmental review, continued to have an influence on the setting/ establishment of outdoor safety standards for the sector. As an organisation, we aim to measure outcomes against the strategic goals in all the work we do. Because our work is mostly in proactive education, we do not always have good outcome driven statistics that may otherwise be used as a measure of success. MSC needs to find ways to secure long term funding streams that then give some guarantee to ongoing work, and support for the various programmes. MSC remains focussed on the provision of high quality information and education within the Outdoors Sector, and to do this efficiently, we need to be looking at building long term relationships with our partners, member organisations and the greater community.
Chairperson of Council
PROgRAMME SNAPSHOTS:
A PROCESS FOR EVALUATING THE OUTCOMES OF MSC
In 2009 MSC achieved funding from LGB Community Sector Research Fund to develop an outcomes evaluation framework for the organisation. This has been an exciting project involving the executive and the staff in mapping out what we want to achieve, the steps involved in getting there and how we would be able to articulate some of these outcomes. Having developed the framework we are now at the stage of being able to undertake some evaluation projects which will enable us to better understand our effectiveness.
Another aspect of this project has been the process of sharing the method and tools of developing an outcomes evaluation framework with a number of other outdoor sector organisations. It is great for MSC to be in a position to be able to lead the sector by sharing and supporting other organisations through the process of developing an outcomes evaluation framework. The result of this will be that a number of outdoor organisations will be using the same tools and language to articulate their strategic plan and their evaluation plan which will enable greater ability for role clarity and collaboration amongst these organisations.
annie dignan Programme Manager Research and Evaluation
ROSS MEDER
CEO’S REPORT 2009-2010
Throughout 2009-2010 MSC continued to deliver outdoor safety education, advice and awareness for those participating, leading and who were responsible for others in land based outdoor activity. Through our collaborative efforts we have built on the considerable work of the past and continue to enable people to enjoy the New Zealand outdoors safely.
Our key areas of focus were Council & governance, organisation consolidation, purposeful functional delivery (including community education, research & development, advice & evaluation), and securing project and sustained core funding.
We continued to receive support for our core funding from LGB and NZ Police despite the ongoing tough economic environment. We achieved reasonable success in securing oneoff project funding from a variety of sources.
Our profile and the level of community and outdoor sector expectation (at a local, regional and national level) continues to increase.
Throughout the year we developed and implemented an outcomes evaluation model to better measure our effectiveness in this.
The healthy tension of prioritising need with available resources while also balancing the books meant some difficult decisions were made. Specifically we:
Centralised training: our national programmes delivered through close collaboration between MSC Branches, the national Programme Managers and supported by our continued discussions with Skills Active ITO
Reviewed the snow and avalanche programme: this enabled significant change in programme structure and
management and the benefits are already apparent
Performed a line by line analysis of Branches: this determined how best to support our communities for outdoor safety delivery through the MSC National Branch network
Performed a line by line analysis of all MSC operating budgets: this resulted in our being able to manage our costs in a number of areas.
Looking forward, the successes and challenges from this year provide the opportunity to apply the lessons learned to our ongoing collaboration, consolidation of improvements, developing exceptional operational delivery, providing sound Governance and securing sustainable core funding.
I would like to thank all those who gave generously of their volunteer time to the Council whether through community instruction, advice on technical committees or in governance roles. My thanks also to the staff who offer their expertise to the Council as well as to the Council member agencies who endorse our mandate and actively work collaboratively with us.
I look forward to the coming year with all the opportunities and challenges that will bring, confident that as we continue to work together we will see more people in the New Zealand outdoors more often, safely.
VOLUNTEER INSTRUCTOR COUNT bY
DISCIPLINE AS AT 30 JUNE 2010 (1645 MEMbERS WITH 2299 APPOINTMENTS)
VOLUNTEER ACTIVITY HOURS bY DISCIPLINE AS AT 1 JULY 09 TO 30 JUNE 2010 (17959
PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE PARTICIPATING IN MSC ACTIVITIES AS AT 1 JULY TO 30 JUNE (22783 PEOPLE)
29 branches including the Cadets, the Duke of Ed and the Hillary Award
9,112 people attended MSC Training (excluding Firearms training and testing)
9,909 people attended MSC Firearms safety training
17959 hours of activity was generated by branches which involved 31927 hours of instructor commitment.
COLLAbORATIVE PROJECTS
Department of Labour Review (DoL, ONZ, TIANZ, WSNZ)
Visitor Intentions System (MSC/DOC/NZSAR/LandSAR)
Topo 50 Map Series (MSC/LINZ)
Walking Access (MSC/NZWAC)
New Zealand Mountain Radio Service (MSC/NZMRS)
Tongariro Alpine Crossing (MSC/DOC/TIANZ/TAC operators)
Community engagement and safety delivery (MSC/DIA/LGB)
ATES -avalanche terrain exposure scale (MSC/DOC/ SAANZ/Snow and Avalanche Industry)
Avalanche Info-Ex (MSC/SAANZ/Downer Edi/Snow and Avalanche Industry)
Avalanche Forecasting programme (MSC/DOC)
Ski Areas Management Safety Strategy - SAMSS (MSC/SAANZ)
Outcomes Evaluation Project (MSC/SPARC/NZRA/ONZ/EONZ/ NZAC/DoE HILLARY AWARD)
River Safety DVD (MSC/ONZ/WSNZ)
DARRYL CARPENTER Chief Executive of
MSC
National Incident Database (MSC/SSC/EONZ/NZOIA/TIANZ/ ONZ/MoE)
Firearms Programme (MSC/NZ POLICE)
Hunter National Training Scheme – HUNTS (MSC/NZDA/NZP)
Whakatupato (MSC /Police/Iwi)
Visitor Risk Management Strategy (MSC/TNZ/TIANZ/WAC/ SPARC/NZ POLICE/NZSAR/LandSAR/ACC)
Qualifications alignment (MSC/Skills Active/NZOIA)
EOTC resource and implementation support (MSC/SPARC/EONZ)
DARRyL CARPENTER
DIRECTORY
COUNCIL MEMBERS
Accident Compensation Corporation: Dr Simon Gianotti
Boys Brigade of NZ: Joe Fecteau
Department of Conservation: Christeen Mackenzie *
Department of Labour: Bryan Williams
Duke of Edinburgh Hillary Awards: Cindy Naresh
Education Outdoors NZ: Allen Hill
Federated Mountain Clubs of NZ: Phil Glasson
Federation of NZ Youth Organisations: Tony Hickmore
Scouting NZ: Tony Hickmore
Girl Guiding NZ: Jenny Jordan
Girls Brigade: Elizabeth Dickens
LAND SAR: Dave Comber
NZ Alpine Club: Chris Short
NZ Deerstalkers Association: Trevor Dyke *
NZ Police:
Inspector Joe Green *
NZ Shooting Federation: David Rew
NZ Cadet Force: Dave Bennett
NZ Defence Force: Captain Brendan Lynch
NZ Mountain Guides Association: Dave Crow
NZ Outdoors Instructors Association: Steve Milgate
NZ Snowsports Council: Miles Davidson
NZ Sports industry Association: Dean Eager
Tourism Industry Association NZ: Geoff Ensor *
ASSOCIATE MEMBER
Search and Rescue Institute of NZ: David Shearer
COMMITTEE CONvENERS
Alpine Convener: Jamie Robertson
Bushcraft Convener: Noel Bigwood
Education Convener: Allen Hill
Firearms Safety Convener: Bryce Meredith – replacing Inspector Joe Green
HUNTS Convener:
Inspector Joe Green
Research Convener: Dr Mike Boyes
Risk Management Convener: Garth Gully
Snow & Avalanche Convener: Chris Emmett – replacing Hamish McCrostie
REgIONAL REPRESENTATIvES
Region 1 Murray Douglas *
Region 2 Anja Morris
Region 3 Noel Bigwood
Region 4 Ben Luders
Region 5 Tania MacKinnon
Region 6 Ross Meder *
Region 7 Sally Duston – replacing Colin McGillivray
