Kia ora koutou,

A final message about doing some volunteering. A handful of us have locked in Monday 13 December as the day we’re going to volunteer. There’s still time to jump on the bandwagon though, so if this day suits you, drop me a message and I’ll add you to our super-secret-library-farm-squad.

Ngā mihi,

Brian

I was stoked to see that library management have given us the opportunity to take a day to do some volunteering. I have a friend who manages Smith Street Urban Farm in Linwood, and I’m gonna volunteer there, hopefully one Friday before Christmas.

Do you want to volunteer, but don’t have something in mind? Do you want to spend a day in the (hopefully) sun while helping out some of our communities who have it toughest? Do you want to turn your green fingers to the cause of Good, instead of Evil?

Come and volunteer with me!

If you’re interested in getting some mud under your fingernails and doing some feelgood volunteering, drop me an email at brian.mcelwaine@canterbury.ac.nz ASAP, because there’s not a heap of time to get organised!

Here’s the spiel that the site manager sent me about volunteering there:

At Smith Street community garden/urban farm we have work on a variety of projects, from work on the mara kai, foraging pathway and nursery seedling hub are all go this time of year.

We are operational Monday to Friday 9-4pm. The garden is in the heart of Linwood where food security is a real and daily struggle, within our garden we have plots tendered by the Afghanistan community, City Mission have a large plot which supplies their night shelter,  gardens for mental health support agencies and individual plots for those in our community. Volunteering with Smith Street Urban Farm supports all these communities and the wider environs of the eastern suburbs.  Here are three of the major projects you will be working on.

1. The mara kai grows market garden style crops for a weekly box system for members of the community and those in need of a nutrition boost.
2. The Foraging pathway is a long-term project; we are currently clearing 400m of shrubs and overgrowth and creating a series of braided pathways eventually enabling an urban drainage ditch and pedestrian pathway to be integrated into the garden.
3. The nursery hub is the base camp of operations we have three tunnel houses and a large grow on area that provides the vegetable and annual seedling for the mara kai, foraging and wider community projects, attention to detail and good record keeping are essential skills in this space.

Health and Safety

All staff are vaccinated as we are an open-air space mask wearing is not at this stage mandatory however if working in close proximity to others masks are recommended and provided.  When working with volunteer groups new to gardening or manual labour we break down the work into simple tasks, working with experienced team members tasks maybe simple but incredibly rewarding as real progress can immediately be seen. We really appreciate volunteer labour and provide morning tea and a shared lunch.

Please bring your own water bottles, sun screen and a hat, good, closed shoes are essential as is a smile.

general duties include wheel barrowing mulch, compost, weeding clearing flaxes planting and weeding vegetables sowing and re potting seedlings.

Kia ora koutou,

the issue with Follow you printing has apparently been fixed, and students might need to log out and in again to make the connection again. This from ITS:

Issue with Follow You printer has been fixed.
(Sorry, haven’t had time to determine the actual cause .. but it’s fixed.) 🙂

Thanks!
Nathan Wain
ITS Workrooms

Brian

Always wanted to try out ebikes? Worried that they’re costly? UC has teamed up with EVO bikes to offer some discounts and financing options for ebikes, and there’s a try-out tomorrow outside Okeover, 10am-2pm. Come and have a go on an ebike, and see if you can lure yourself into a more active 2021 🙂 More details:

https://blogs.canterbury.ac.nz/tu-ki-te-tahi/2021/03/25/evo-cycles-onsite-demonstration-of-e-bikes/

Kia ora koutou,

A friend (and UC student) is doing her Masters, and is looking for parents of kids 2-12 years old to participate in a sleep study.  There’s $20 (or maybe $40) in it for you, plus you’ll be contributing to a broader study about sleep in children with brain injuries. If you have the requisite offspring, take a look at the below and get in touch with Lou at lmm194@uclive.ac.nz to get involved 🙂

Kia ora koutou,

My good buddy Skry is moving into his own place (they grow up so fast!) and is gonna get a couple of chickens. He loves pun names (His last chickens were Cluck Norris, Princess Layer and Maggie Hatcher) and he’s keen to pun-name the new crop. If anyone is able to think of any pun names matching the dubious quality above, could you comment them here or fire them in an email to me please? The cheesier the better 🙂

Brian

Kia ora koutou,

Thank you to so many of you for submitting feedback on how we communicate here in the library. I’ve collated it all, and given it to Anne. I really appreciate your candour and good humour in terms of what you’ve provided, and I share your hope that positive cultural change can come of honest information sharing.

Thanks again!

Brian

Kia ora koutou,

We had a Speech and Language therapy Masters student at EPS today inviting staff to participate in a 5 minute survey for her work. If you’d like to partiicpate to help a student out, here’s the link 🙂

https://canterbury.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_00rQu8V7xlcUcn3?Q_CHL=qr

Kia ora koutou,

After this afternoon’s staff meeting, and the suggestion from Helen that we put on our thinking caps about how better to manage bottom-up communication channels, I’d like to put something together for it, having had my dainty shoes in both camps.

Many of you might have your own comments to make, and I’d encourage you to do that (to Helen, I guess?) but if you want to have your say with a little anonymity, can you send your comments to me before the end of this Friday 12 June, please? I’ll collate them, and mash them together to try to make a constructive conversation-starter on how we can enable more and better bottom-up communication, and/or what might help with the ways top-down communication is handled in the library.

What are the issue for you at the moment in terms of how we’re communicating between levels? What do you want the management team to know?

Thanks!

Brian