Beth | Point Chevalier

“My name is Beth and I live just around the corner in Pt Chev. Actually, my flatmate is really interested in the community, and she has this idea of putting on a street party in our street.

So a couple of weeks ago we had people from all over the street come to our living room for a planning meeting, and it was just so awesome. Different people brought food. They brought crafts. They brought ideas. People are going to lend us their marquees and their chairs and barbeques and stuff, and we’re going to put on a party in December. It was just really cool seeing people that we’d never known before, so willing to provide all this stuff and be really generous with their time and with their precious possessions to put on a bit of a party. 

I think it’s really important. I guess it’s just because I think it’s really nice to be connected to your neighbours and your community. Like a small example is that we have a vegetable garden at my flat, and we can sometimes end up with a lot of extra produce, and if we share it with our neighbours, they can share what they have with us and I think it just creates a nice community feel, and it means that everybody gets a little bit, and we all share it around.

So I grew up in Dunedin. I’ve only been in Auckland for just over a year and I actually am training to be an opera singer and I work in a charity, in fundraising at the moment. So I guess I value creativity, and definitely community, and connecting with other people, and growing food in your backyard is really something that’s really important to me, as well.

It’s really easy to kind of – well we all get in our little insular bubble, and we get nervous about talking to our neighbours, or talking to people we don’t know but I think it’s really important to maybe go a little bit outside your comfort zone. Definitely having this meeting showed me that there are people that are willing to get outside their houses and meet up with their neighbours, and it’s made me a lot more open to doing more stuff like that, in the future. It’s just nice to be able to walk down the street and be like; okay that’s that person’s house, that’s that person’s house like if I need some banana’s, I can get them off Walter’s tree, or whatever. It’s not that hard. Like, we just put some fliers in everyone’s letterboxes and a bunch of us all came together for a meeting. So, you can do it, too. You just need to have a printer and set a date. I think it’s really easy and it’s really nice and really important.”