Voluntary Organisations Part 1

Frank's memoirs

Trade Aid

In 1981 Margaret and I became interested in the Third World Shop (as it was called in those days), which had been established a few years before by a group largely composed of young Catholic people led by Harry Duynhoven. We became volunteers after the shop at the corner of Egmont and King streets was burnt out along with the neighbouring shops in the block. 

The shop was re-established in the market held in the ground floor of the Mill Building in Powderham Street on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings. We did regular stints working in the shop and both joined the Shop Committee. On the committee with us were Harry, and Esmae and Rob Rowlands, ? Coneglan, Mrs Karalus and Bobbie and Ben ? 

In 1987 Harry was elected to parliament as the MP for New Plymouth, and I was elected Chair of the Shop Committee. We always had a Trust Board which oversaw the governance; in practice the Shop Committee ran the shop. We attended a couple of conferences of what was renamed the Trade Aid movement in Palmerston and Christchurch. 

We oversaw the shift from the Mill to what had been the foyer of the State Cinema in Devon Street. And later the shop shifted closer to the action in a shop near the entrance to the Warehouse. 

While we were in the old State Theatre, Margaret’s mother agreed to become the co-ordinator of the weekend roster, and all three of us enjoyed helping the whole project.  

Trade Aid is a successful concept because it works at both ends of the supply chain, assisting and encouraging the producers of the products, and provides opportunities for volunteer workers to get practically involved, an advantage it shares with organisations like Hospice.

 

 

2.        Restorative Justice

 

For some years we had been interested in the theories of Restorative Justice, and had read the book on that subject by Jim Considine. 

However in the early 2000s a group began operations in New Plymouth, and we offered to help.  This involved undergoing the initial training and becoming facilitators for conferences referred from the court. The co-ordinator for the RJ Trust was a highly respected District Councillor, Heather Dodunski. 

So after the training, we both started helping as co-facilitator for occasional conferences, and I was elected to the Trust Board. 

We also attended a movement conference in Wellington and heard leaders of the organisation like Kim Workman speaking very eloquently about the principles and goals of RJ. We soon discovered that each region had its own slightly different slant on the way RJ should work. 

In Taranaki, the system was that a defendant who had pleaded guilty in court could, in appropriate cases, ask for a RJ conference, and if the victims agreed this could happen if the judge ordered it. 

Then the co-ordinator appointed two facilitators to arrange and run the conference, with the ultimate result to be a recommendation to the judge about reparation and penalty. The facilitator’s job was to contact all the people involved, defendant, victims, supporters, and arrange time and place for the conference, hold it, and then write up the report with all participants’ signatures supporting it. The co-facilitator took notes and assisted the main facilitator in any other way they agreed. 

We did not have police or other officials present in their official capacity, though they could attend sometimes as observers. And participants had to attend in person; no representatives, such as community panels, were used in Taranaki.