Dru | Manurewa
“I’m Dru, and I consider the whole of South Auckland my home. Right now, I live in Manurewa. Probably just all the stuff going on in our community.
I think there’s a lot of things clashing at the moment in our communities, which has got to do with housing, schooling, even jobs, and stuff like that. You’ve got to kind of think about our younger people coming through, and what they’ve got to look forward to. I think in this community, well it’s not looking too sharp at the moment, because of the people that are maybe making the decisions for our communities and the response that we’re giving them as well. So it’s two ways.
I grew up in Ōtara and Ōtāhuhu and I can pretty much say I’m a product of a normal South Auckland family. I love it here, and schooling out here was all good. Family life out here was all good, but it just looks like it’s gotten harder and harder from when I was young, to now. Just things in the community have changed heaps and the things that are important now wasn’t as important when we were younger. You know, like kids were going out and playing and stuff, whereas now everyone’s connected to some kind of device which is kind of sad.
For my community, I’d like more community projects where we can get the community more involved; whether it’s with school or family groups because there’s a lot of training groups and all that out there now, which is quite cool. We’ve got a lot of health and wellbeing community groups out there now, and gyms and that are getting a lot of good responses, but also, I’d also like to see better food places in the community. Because for all the people that are starting to do all these challenges and training with these gyms, that’s real good, but our community needs to help by having better food places where the food can also help people make dramatic changes with their health and wellbeing.
I’ve done some study with fitness and health, but a lot of the stuff that I know now has all been my own research. Now I’m just working, and I enjoy my job, my career, and I’m looking to start a family soon, and that’s why my direction and my thoughts have been going towards more future thinking.”
