Community building (or embracing our community) is super important. It’s our support system - part of the nurture that we require to thrive in life.  We are always meant to connect with others - enjoying time with each other, supporting one another, working with one another towards goals and values that resonate.  This is what we are looking to engender as we build and embrace our community. 

 

Despite supply chain problems and increasing controls on our lives, if we put focus and energy into building our community, this will provide us with not only a means to survive, but to THRIVE! 

 

We’re planning heaps of projects to embrace over the coming months. The first aiming to improve our local resilience - which ties in with locally grown and sourced food.  Are you yourself growing fruit/veggies?  Can you support others in doing the same? We are looking to improve what we already have in this area and further develop robust growing & distribution systems and local trading networks click www.longwoodloop.co.nz to join up with a network that is successfully running in Western Southland to connect local growers with customers.

 

At the start of 2024 we launched the Riverton Community Market which is proving to be a lot of fun as well as supporting local producers, and crafts people. We also started the Riverton Open Mic acoustic nights at Jacob's River Bakehouse just after Christmas 2023 which have been such wholesome evenings - NOTE: these have recently migrated to The Space (120 Palmerston Street) to coincide with their monthly art exhibition launches.

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There are Repair Cafes running on an adhoc basis, encouraging us to reduce waste and learn repair skills.  There is also a local MenzShed, supporting men and women who wish to develop or improve on their woodworking skills.

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There are a number of awesome projects and workshops being run by the South Coast Environment Centre (https://www.sces.org.nz/projects) that you can hook into to boost your understanding and skills of things like seed saving, growing your own food, creating good compost, grafting fruit trees, creating a solar set up, making biochar. etc.  There is also a yearly Heritage Harvest Festival that is run around the end of March (next one is 28th and 29th March 2026) with some excellent workshops on many topics!  

 

Our emphasis is on keeping it real, creating our own reality, living in hope, learning new practical skills and re-establishing and enjoying our connections with each other, the land and ocean.

 

More information will be added to this website as projects get rolled out..  watch this space!