Shona Graham with Katikati Primary School Year 1 student Chevelle Nathan, 6, working on sounding words. Photo / Merle Cave.
“It’s great to see you Chevelle. How are you today?
“Did you do some nice things with the whānau in the holidays?
“How’s [your brother] Khavallie?”
The positivity, happiness and love exude from Shona Graham as she greets Year 1 student Chevelle Nathan in Katikati Primary School’s reading recovery room.
The 6-year-old starts animatedly chatting about staying up late with his cousins, and after a two-week break, the bond is recemented and the reading enthusiastically begins.
“I particularly love kids,” Graham said.
“That’s where I’m most comfortable.”
Why?
“Oh, you just learn from them all the time – like you’re teaching them, but you’re learning from them too,” Graham said.
“They’re so open. I love that about them, you know, as adults, we close off a bit.
“We show the parts of ourselves that we want to be seen, whereas just like kids, I still like to be silly … I don’t know … I get them, and they get me."
Graham enjoys starting her week with two hours of reading with Katikati Primary students.
At June’s Kati Chat, the 56-year-old was recognised for 30 years of volunteer work in her community of Katikati.
Graham was enjoying hearing about others being celebrated when she was presented with a Lifetime Volunteer Award, by Volunteering Services for her outstanding contribution.
Graham said when she answered a newspaper advert calling for volunteers to help with Katikati’s Christmas Float Parade back in 1995, she never imagined it would spark a 30-year journey in community service.
“I thought that would be a good way to meet people. It all started from there.”
A pregnant Graham and partner Peter Cox had moved to Katikati from the United Kingdom with their 3-year-old daughter Hannah in 1995 and bought a lifestyle block south of town.
“Hannah was in kindy and it [volunteering] was just a way to get into the community really.”
The parade work morphed into volunteering at Katikati Resource Centre – today called Katikati Community Centre – then the school holiday programme and after-school care, and on to all kinds of expos and events hosted by the centre.
“I met Chris Ridder [former Katikati Resource Centre manager] and she’d just started the school holiday programme the year before.
“I was like: ‘Yeah, we’ll give it a whirl’ and I’m still there. Then of course I just became part and parcel of the centre,” Graham said.
Other acts of love have been participating in Katikati’s annual Spring Clean events with daughter Phoebe, health expos and in recent years, community picnics and the Festival of Cultures.
“This is a big one for me. I love this.
“I just feel it brings our community together and it’s so lovely to see how many different cultures live here.”
Graham smiles when she thinks of how the Recognised Seasonal Employer workers get so into it: “I love that they’re so enthusiastic”.
How did she volunteer when she had two preschool-aged kids?
“Peter and I were gardeners, so I was lucky enough to have both of my girls at home when they were little. The block of land we bought was bare and we wanted to be as self-sufficient as we could,” the avid vege gardener said.
“So I didn’t have to work full-time because of the simple lifestyle that we chose.”
Graham said Cox reinvented himself, turning his hands to all sorts of work.
When Phoebe went to school, the couple took on gardening and never looked back. Cox got roped into various things, “usually for the holiday programme”.
Volunteering is a family affair for Graham. Her mother volunteered when she was young – and now daughter Phoebe volunteers at the centre.
“My mum had the time and she taught us that if you can give back a bit, it just makes our communities work and you meet people you wouldn’t usually.”
After nearly three decades, Graham said she’s practically part of the building:
“The centre’s been such a big part of my life – and I guess I’ve become part of it too. Some of the kids I’m working with now are the children of people I did classes for years ago.
“It’s pretty special.”
So what keeps driving her to keep giving?
“Volunteering is so good for the soul. Once you start, you’ll see how if everyone gave a little bit back, our communities would all be thriving.”
She knows for some “it’s not their bag”, but for Graham, “I’m a people person. I love it.”
Katikati Community Centre manager Nicky Austin said it would be impossible to count the hours that Graham had given to her community.
“She’s cheery, positive, hard-working, and we couldn’t survive without her.”
Katikati News had to sit in with her on a Katikati Primary School reading recovery lesson just to catch up with her.
The school’s literacy specialist teacher, Andrea Menhinick, said Graham was a huge asset to their team of volunteer readers.
“She forms beautiful relationships [with the students], she’s just so pleased to see the kids, and they pick that up.
“But what I find exceptional about her is that even when students are on their way to assembly, and they have to just sit and wait – Shona is there with a child and a book so that she makes the use of every minute,” Menhinick said.
“She is so invested in the children.”
This journalist remembers Graham being a comforting voice the first time she dropped her child off for the school holiday programme.
However, Graham is quick to say others are more worthy of an award than her.
“I don’t like to blow my own horn.”
But she was very proud.
“It was lovely to be recognised. My daughters and Peter were very proud, and he thought it was hilarious because he knows I don’t like being in the spotlight.”