Our guest speaker Bob McCroskie, Founder of Family First shared with us some of the current work of Family First- mostly in the form of research conducted on how the lack of traditional family structure and values can have a negative impact on social issues (e.g. single parenting, child poverty, physical abuse, teenage pregnancies, and others).  The main objectives for Family First is to surface issues or "talk about the elephant in the room," have a debate around those issues that negatively impact families (e.g. pornography, family violence, etc.), and influence change. While the definition of "traditional family" in a progressive society like New Zealand may be up for debate, the statistics Bob shared with us were alarming and raised a call for action to find solutions be it at a government or local grassroots level.

 

President-Elect Byran Theunisen was our 10-minute speaker today and he shared a fascinating personal story about "Growing up in South Africa during Apartheid." He opened up a window into a world where many of us can only imagine segregation based on skin colour, ethnicity, language, and religion. Byran shared with us his experience of being "Cape Coloured" - a person of colour growing up in Cape Town, and how it was "normal" to be surrounded by people who looked like him or various shades of him, while there were only a handful of "whites" to be seen. Byran successfully navigated through the temptations of joining a gang and resisted the material trappings they offered and managed to stay true to himself to see a new South Africa that was born in 1995 when Nelson Mandela became President. We are very lucky that Byran's family came to New Zealand and that we have further opportunities to learn more about his exciting life journey.

 

Speaking of life journeys, our Club member Carole Buckley will be starting the next chapter of her life in Dunedin (sometime in October) where she will be closer to family. While we won't say good bye to Carole just yet- she's promised to come back to visit us when she's in Auckland- she's been a wonderful member and we will miss her.