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Community events and projects
In mid-November, a crew from City Care's landscaping division
built the first South Island leg of the Te Araroa trail for the Te
Araroa trust. The 56km leg from Tekapo to Twizel is part of a
hiking and biking track that the Te Araroa trust hopes will run
from Bluff to Cape Reinga by 2008. City Care did a lot of the
work for free and half of the members of the 12-person crew
working on the project were pre-apprentices.
The company sponsored the Weekend of Walks event in
Christchurch over Easter weekend.
Other community support included contributions to the
Christchurch City Mission, Community Watch, support of
Christchurch City's Festival of Flowers and Romance and
Heathcote River Day.
We also supported the SCAPE Biennial 04 community art
event by providing an arborist to assist with the "Tree of
Fortune" artwork which involved decoration of a living tree,
and in Tauranga we provided labour for a garden makeover
competition run by the Tauranga City Council in conjunction
with the Tauranga Environment Centre's Sustainable Backyards
programme.
Staff sporting activities
During the year, the company also supported staff participation
in sporting events by sponsoring corporate teams competing
in multi-sport adventure races and the Molesworth Muster,
an 80km mountain bike race through the Molesworth Station
to Hanmer. We also supported a City Care team in the
Christchurch City to Surf fun run/walk in April 2005.
Rural firefighting
City Care continued to maintain a trained rural firefighting
response team and 30 company staff participated in a
large scale rural fire exercise held in Canterbury in October.
Fortunately, due to prevailing weather conditions in Canterbury
the fire season this year was a lot less demanding than during
the previous year.
COMMUNITY SUPPORT & LEADERSHIP
Expansion of the pre-apprentice programme
City Care expanded its award-winning pre-apprentice
programme to Tauranga in March 2005, recruiting a programme
coordinator and 10 young trainees. To offer variety on the
programme City Care has partnered with Fulton Hogan (Bay of
Plenty) and Arborcare.
We also recruited another 24 young unemployed people and
school-leavers for this year's programme in Christchurch, which
commenced in February 2005.
School partnerships
The company continued to build on its partnerships with local
high schools in Christchurch and Tauranga (for further details
see page 30). We also employed a number of students on
projects over the Christmas holiday period.
Leadership
City Care takes an active leadership role within relevant
professional bodies. Managing Director Richard Lauder is an
executive committee member of the New Zealand Business
Council for Sustainable Development and a Roading NZ
Board member; Southern Regional Manager Onno Mulder is a
Technical Committee Member of the New Zealand Water and
Waste Water Association; and Business Processes Manager
Denise Bowen is the Branch Chair for the Northern South Island
branch of INGENIUM.
City Care's Firefighting Response Team demonstrates to Christchurch
Boys' High students.
