By 3 News online staff
Expat Kiwi billionaire Owen Glenn today announced a new project to help "build stronger communities" and fight New Zealand's child abuse statistics, which he calls "shocking".
The first suburb to benefit will be Auckland's Otara, where he lived as a young man.
“It is shocking to think in a beautiful country like New Zealand these problems exist, but the growing statistics are alarming and it’s simply not good enough," says Mr Glenn.
"People don’t realise that the cost of domestic violence and child abuse to the New Zealand economy is the equivalent of rebuilding Christchurch every four years – forever. It’s a national embarrassment."
Mr Glenn plans to spend over $8 million in Otara, which will be a "test case".
“We have to start somewhere, so where better than Otara, a place where I once lived and still have an affinity with," says Mr Glenn.
Some of the plans for the money include building a 1.6km cycling and exercise track in Ngati Otara Park, supporting Women's Refuge and funding programmes for violent men, and setting up a scholarship for Otara High School students to encourage tertiary study.
Mr Glenn says Otara has changed a lot from when he lived there, but it still has serious issues.
"I lived here long ago and when I was a young married man with children and I remember some of the things I saw at that time going on around me. In fact, it was the violence and maltreatment of children that I saw then, that helped me decide to leave this country to go and live in Australia. That was a long time ago and I know, since then, some things have changed.
"But I know that it is still a community that suffers from extremely low incomes, high unemployment, high welfare dependence, high levels of transience and truancy from school, high levels of teenage pregnancy, high levels of substandard and crowded housing, and poor childhood and adult health."
He says community organisations need long-term funding and better coordination, which his Glenn Family Foundation hopes to achieve.
"There are lots of programmes out there, unfortunately there is a significant lack of connection and coordination amongst them. Many are subject to short-term and sporadic funding contracts and winning funding and complying with the reporting requirements of these contracts becomes the principal objectives, rather than what they are really trying to achieve."
He will also pay for a commission of inquiry "to get to the bottom of why domestic violence and child abuse still remains such a major issue in New Zealand and to solve this issue".
“Together, with other interested parties I will fund it because I'm not willing to let whom-ever is in Government hide behind the cost as a barrier, to avoid embarrassment. I'll work with people who share my passion in this area to foot the bill to make sure it happens."
Mr Glenn says the money will be spent on:
- Support Otara Health to develop a Families Centre and to provide and coordinate a range of positive programmes and services for young people, parents and families. It will also be supported to extend the work of its Neighbourhood Support Groups and its Kaitohutohu Home Visiting Service;
- Support Eastern Women’s Refuge and its associated Men’s Caucus to establish a Men’s House and programmes for violent men;
- Work with the Warriors and Hockey New Zealand to support young people’s engagement and learning in schools in Otara;
- Work with business and the Otara/Papatoetoe Local Board to fund and construct a safe 1,600 metre cycling and exercise walkway/track in Ngati Otara Park. Within easy walking distance are 1,460 primary school children;
- Introduce a “Coaching Boys into Men” programme for coaches and trainers in Otara to help boys understand that violence on or off the field is not OK;
- Support Sistema Aotearoa to foster teamwork, confidence, pride and aspiration in Otara children by learning to play music and to promote the same values in the community;
- Support Otara Schools interested in introducing or expanding eLearning (the deep integration of digital technologies into how children learn) for their students. The aim is help engage students in their learning and to lift their achievement at school;
- Support Otara Schools who wish to introduce a Garden to Table programme which introduces practical education on how to grow vegetables and fruit and to cook the produce into a school;
- Support the Young Enterprise Trust to offer practical enterprise, entrepreneurship and financial literacy programmes to students in interested Otara schools;
- Support the Springboard Trust in their work to provide strategic leadership training for school principals in low decile areas;
- Support Teach First New Zealand efforts to increase the supply of science, math and English teachers to high schools in low decile areas;
- Set up a set of Owen G Glenn First in Family Tertiary Scholarships for Otara High School students to encourage them to go on into tertiary education or training.
3 News
source: newshub archive
