Parafed Bay of Plenty, Parafed Waikato and Halberg Disability Sport Foundation are in the midst of signing a significant MoU document to pilot a relationship that if successful could be rolled out around the country. The MoU will see these organisations work a lot closer together creating coordination across aonce fragmented and almost dilapidated physical disability sporting sector.
Pivotal to its success is a shared executive officer position. Chloe Wickman has been brought on board in this position. Originally from Te Puke, Chloe has excellent knowledge of the sector and sport in particular having been Parafed Waikato development officer for the past 4 years.
Parafed Waikato and Bay of Plenty see this position as a natural progression to smooth any speed wobbles after a lot of individual work to create opportunities for our communities. Halberg Disability Sport Foundation has been identified by Sport NZ as the national lead agency for the physical disability sporting sector and is working on a national strategic plan. It made perfect sense to bring these three organisations together in this way to create some leverage and have some real impact.
Weekly local sports training have kicked off for 2014 with big smiles after summer breaks.
Rotorua wheelchair basketball has already had an event integrated into a mainstream local Maori tournament. A Waikato team and players from Taranaki enjoyed their first hit out with the Bay players.
Wheelchair Rugby continues to grow with the first event hosted at ASB Arena, Mount Maunganui on March 1. This is a grass roots tournament aimed at giving local players and developing players from provincial neighbours a platform to start the season and hopefully go onto national tournaments. There could be as many as three teams from the Bay and interest from Auckland and Waikato.
Disabled Sailing Trust, operating alongside Yachting NZ's Sailability programme at the Rotorua Yacht Club, continues to provide fantastic opportunities for people to leave their disabilities at the wharf and get amongst the world of sailing.
It gives our organisation great pleasure in seeing these opportunities and many more provided for our sporting sector. Sport and Recreation does good things for everyone's spirit.
