Voluntary Organisations Part 3

Frank's memoirs

Friends of Puke Ariki

There is one other voluntary organisation that I found personally very absorbing, and that was the Friends of Puke Ariki. 

Puke Ariki is the ground-breaking institution set up around ten years ago by the District Council to operate the libraries and the museum, plus the information centre. 

The Friends of Taranaki Museum changed its name. We had just moved into the city from Oakura, and I was able to attend the Annual Meeting, and was elected to the committee immediately. 

When we came to appointing the officers at our first meeting, I offered to take over the role of treasurer, and to edit the newsletter. I coped with the books, which were in a bit of disorder, but it was the newsletter I really enjoyed. 

It gave me the opportunity to research and write about the history of Taranaki, and the city itself, on such topics as buildings, street names, prominent people and so on. The newsletter was appreciated by many of those who read it regularly, and enabled me to find out more information about my grandfather’s activities when he lived here in the first decade of the twentieth century. 

The problem with the organisation though was that no matter what we tried, we did not succeed in attracting large numbers of new members, which was important if we were to fulfil our aims of promoting and supporting the work of the institution.

 

 

      Other failures.

 

Two organisations I found myself on the committees of were destined for closure.  

WEA was finding itself short of finance and of support in the community. Government agencies were putting money only into community education run by institutions; more democratic groups, who emphasised what people can do to educate themselves and each other by their own efforts, were left almost completely without support. 

So we had to plan and carry through the shut-down of WEA in Taranaki. I joined the committee when a long-time friend and associate, Jeff Hond, died and left a vacancy. Jeff was the husband of Pat Hond, my colleague when working with Maatua Whaangai. 

The other demise was TALELTS: Taranaki Adult Literacy and English Language Teaching Service. This organisation had quite successfully managed the adult literacy programme with immigrant services to teach English as a second language. 

However we were instructed by the national body which governed ESOL services to divide the two programmes; wealthy immigrants would be put off by being lumped together with illiterate New Zealanders. 

We argued to be allowed to retain the previous structure, but the national bosses would have none of it and threatened to stop our funding. So democracy went down the drain and we had to divide the two services and set up another committee, etc, etc. Both operate, presumably on shoestring budgets, since then.

 

The key person in both these changes was Jeanne Van Gorkom, who was well-known in community education circles for being an pioneer and strong advocate for the more democratic type of education services.

 

Now I belong to U3A which works in a similar way.

 

Hurworth Cottage

 

 

More recently we have joined a small volunteer group to help keep the gardens tidy at hurworth Cottage, Taranaki's only Historic Places Trust property. Especially during the garden festival in the spring, we attend to help host visitors and explain the history of this important building, one of the few built before the wars of the 1860s and still standing.

 

It is also important because Harry Atkinson, the man who built it with his own hands, later served as Premier on four separate occasions.