Stars get ready for the big show

By CATHERINE MASTERS

At a West Auckland studio, Xena Warrior Princess changes out of her trademark leather dress and lays down her chakram, her signature weapon.

It is after 7 pm but the deadly serious filming of the day is yet to begin.

The plainclothed Lucy Lawless who emerges from the set for the Xena television series is grim.

The actor is about to run through her lines for a television advertisement that urges New Zealanders to formulate a national strategy to stop child abuse.

Television personality Liz Gunn is there, too, with former All Black Michael Jones, the latest member of the Safe and Sound Appeal action squad - a group of "ordinary" people who decided to stand up and do something after reading unrelenting and horrific reports of the brutal deaths of children.

The appeal was originally intended to raise money to set up a centre in Auckland near the Starship children's hospital, coordinating and streamlining the agencies who work with abused children.

That is still a goal, but overwhelming support has catapulted the concept into the national psyche and the appeal has outgrown the original brief.

About $2 million of free advertising - television, radio and print - has been donated and the Safe and Sound Appeal is going nationwide.

While Lawless and company are its public face, behind the scenes are people such as Dr Emma Davies, a senior lecturer at the Auckland University of Technology's school of education and social sciences, and Dr Ian Hassall, a former Commissioner for Children, who now heads the lobby group Children's Agenda.

The national appeal will ask people for money, but it is intended to do much more than that. The group needs to know "what we as New Zealanders want for our country," said Dr Davies.

The aim is to create a vision, acknowledge the work already being done towards stopping child abuse and bring it all together within a national action plan, involving consultation and discussion.

Said Dr Hassall: "Ordinary people ask what can be done about child abuse. There are two answers. One, we do what we can at a local community level, but we also commit ourselves to something bigger than that which provides a national focus."

Dr Davies said that considering the planning and effort that went into events such as the Olympics and the America's Cup, anything was possible.

"We need to harness everything we have got to build something different. And New Zealand can do that. We're a small nation ... Look what we achieved with the America's Cup."

Many people and organisations were already doing much to try to stop abuse, as the Herald's Light in the Darkness series demonstrated, and all those efforts were part of a jigsaw, but not the full jigsaw. What was missing was a strategy to draw everything together, she said.

Michael Jones said child abuse was a complex problem, but all needed to play their part in finding solutions. "The first step is to mobilise communities to be part of something that will create change."

Herald Online feature: violence at home

Parenting: the toughest job

Donations to the Safe and Sound Appeal can be sent to PO Box 91939, Auckland Mail Centre

Free phone: 0800 946 010