Today is the first day of Mental Health Awareness week. This coincides with our advocacy for Child and Adolescent Mental Health where we continue to fund and support researchers at the University of Auckland to develop various projects/programs to help combat teenage depression.
While it’s important for us to help others in our community, we should not forget about our own mental health as well. So this week is a good reminder for us to reduce our own stress and to enjoy life a bit more. Research has shown we can de-stress by being mindful of “3 Good Things” (https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/three-good-things) and by sharing positive emotions and stories with one another.
Immediate Past President Gill was the perfect example with her 5minute talk where she shared her stories with us about her fantastic visit to Amsterdam where she spent a wonderful time with former member (and friend of Downtown Rotary) Antonio Caliari-Pearce.
Our main speaker this morning was Callum Thorpe from Corrections New Zealand. Callum opened up the “black box” about the NZ corrections system by first sharing with us some data about the organization: how Corrections employs the most psychologists in NZ, has 9,000 employees at Corrections for the 10,000 incarcerated individuals and 30,000 individuals who are on community detention/parole. He also cautioned us by saying much of our impressions about the Corrections system may be influenced by what we read in the headlines or what we hear about the impact of crime on our communities (e.g. 1 crime affects at least 4 innocent people, the rate of recidivism, etc.).
Instead of focusing on the various complicated reasons for how people may end up in the corrections system, Callum shared with us some “good news” stories. These were the stories about the different services that Corrections offers such as re-training (e.g. pig farming, bee-keeping, etc.), counseling, and literacy programs that are there to help those incarcerated have a better chance of improving their lives after serving their time. Callum also shared real-life stories about people whose courage and commitment (along with the support they received from Corrections) enabled them to turn around their lives.
At our meeting we also acknowledged Carole Buckley whose has been an active member of our Club for the past 7 years as she prepares to transfer her Rotary membership (and home) to Dunedin so that she can be closer to family. We are in luck as Carole will still be in Auckland next week, so we will have the opportunity to chat with her more. As she said in her talk to us, this is not “goodbye” but rather “au revoir”. Carole and all other past members are welcome to visit us any time for breakfast or for other events when they are back in Auckland. Once a “Downtowner” always a “Downtowner” I say…
Please note some of the following changes to the upcoming calendar & programs
Change of date for Rub Shoulders at Peter & Gerda’s to some time next year (TBC)
As World Polio Day is 23 October (which is Labour Day in NZ and no meeting), we will donate next week’s sergeants session to End Polio Now
Please register for ticketsto Polio Movie Night Fundraiser by 12 October for (Bohemian Rhapsody) – join Rotarians from our Cluster Club (Harbourside, Auckland East and St. John’s) for a Movie Night on 12 November. There are 13 registered from Downtown Auckland already and 85 tickets left (from total 159 seats for all 4 clubs).
To simplify technical set up for presentations, designated hosts please inform your guest speaker to bring slides on a USB drive and not on individual computer or they can email me their presentation 2 days in advance and I will load onto my macbook.
Planning for the Fundraising Dinner with Nadia Lim on 21st November is underway. What this space for more information.
As part of the Auckland Heritage Festival on Saturday 6th October, four Downtown Rotarians (Phil Caughey, Mike Campbell, Karyn Spencer and David Graham), assisted with the Hillary Leadership Centre's Open House.
The house is located on school grounds near the entrance to the Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate Senior School in Franklyne Road, Otara
One Trustee was a Senior teacher who spoke about his upbringing in Capetown as a young coloured South African during ‘Apartheid’ days. His story had particular parallels with the story told by our President Elect Byran Theunisen.
He also spoke of his experiences as a modern day teacher in a multicultural NZ High School smack bang in the middle of South Auckland where 95% of the students are polite, well-behaved young people wanting to learn and succeed.
Mike Campbell was particularly interested to hear how he dealt with a 15 year old student who was caught on Google during his computer studies lessons searching ‘How to rob a bank and get away with it’. The student failed that lesson and was expelled.
The Trustees are looking for guidance and ideas as to how they can further utilise the valuable resource they have by expanding leadership training within their community and suggestions from Downtown Rotarians in this regard would be appreciated. If you would like more information on this, please contact Phil Caughey or Mike Campbell.
Child and adolescent mental health is a very serious problem in NZ. New Zealand has the highest rate of teenage suicides amongst all OECD countries.
Led by our Champion Graham Hendry, we are striving to support positive change by funding programmes that give clinicians access to the best practise solutions to help with their diagnosis and treatment.
Our Club proudly supports the following projects:
1. SPARX
Downtown Rotary has contributed over $170,000 to fund a Post-Doctoral researcher at the Auckland University School of Psychological Medicine to develop a treatment programme for teenagers suffering from severe depression. The computer-based SPARX electronic game was the result. This interactive tool has been hailed internationally for its continuing success in addressing this disorder.
2. A National Research Network:
75% of mental health issues commence before the age of 25 years. 15% of children and adolescents are known to suffer from mental health but only 3% of them actually get to see a specialist. We cannot fund increasing the number of clinicians (as it is the responsibility of Government). However we are aiming to make the current number of child and adolescent mental health practitioners as effective as possible.
Therefore our objective is to develop an online network to improve communications among academics and practitioners specialising in CAMH to:
Detail the skills and resources that are currently available
Determine the areas of greatest need
Keep practitioners appraised of current proven mainstream research
Collaborate on clinically meaningful NZ-wide research projects
Share outcomes of research projects amongst practitioners
Provide access to visiting specialists
Downtown Rotary is helping with the funding of this national research network.
At present a national survey is being developed to inform the design and use of this network (website). This will be run in October 2018.
The next stage will be to design the website and then to populate it and run an initial ‘test of concept’.
Research into prescribing for children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder
The services over summer 2018-9 of a student to help run this project have been secured, subject to funding and ethics approval by Auckland University. Once approved, it is expected that this project will run from Nov 2018 till Feb 2019 with the results to be presented at an Autism education day in March 2019. A contribution to funding by Downtown Auckland Rotary will materially assist here.
On 22 September, Gareth was one of 5 judges at AGGS to judge teams from 65 year 10 students as they came to the close of their 3 day Business Challenge. Students grouped into companies, decided on a hypothetical product, write a business strategy, ‘sell’ their product, and launch their idea at an oral competition of the final day.
Students get into notional companies where they research and decide on a hypothetical product, write a business strategy to produce and sell their product and then launch the idea in an oral presentation competition on the final day) We had 65 of our Year 10 students involved with this over 3 days and our own member Gareth Juddery was one of the five Judges on the final day.
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