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While the two year 'Kids are Unbeatable' campaign has come to completion, let's not forget the importance of the message!
Jigsaw thanks The Body Shop and Rodney So'oialo and his family for their leadership of this important campaign for children and for their support of Jigsaw and our member agencies, over the past two years. While the campaign is over, its message remains vitally important.
Making a real and positive difference for our children
The joint 'kids are unbeatable' campaign has contributed to significant positive social change for children in New Zealand over the past two years and has also given Jigsaw and its member agencies valued assistance with funding and profile.
Jigsaw is very grateful to the Body Shop and to Rodney So'oialo and his family for getting behind such an important cause and helping New Zealanders think about what our children need, so they can be safe from abuse and violence and thrive within their families and communities.
The highlights of the campaign for Jigsaw and our member agencies were:
- The launch of Year One of the campaign at Civic Square in Wellington on
1 August 2006, with Fat Freddy's Drop giving a great free concert and The All Black's coach as well as several players signing campaign T-shirts.
- The pamphlets in The Body Shop stores, giving the public information about the ways in which child abuse and family violence harm our children and making suggestions about ways people can get help when they need it.
- The launch of Year Two at the Embassy Theatre in June 2007, with a special showing of the original version of The Wizard of Oz.
- The fundraising which has helped Jigsaw agencies to do more to assist children and their families and has enabled Jigsaw to provide some much appreciated extra training and professional development opportunities for Jigsaw practitioners to help them provide the best services possible.
These are some examples of the various Jigsaw agency projects that have been supported through the funding raised by this campaign. Funding has gone into 25 local communities and has been used in ways that will directly benefit local children and young people -
- Supporting residential programmes for children
- Providing parenting programmes
- Buying books, education games, art and craft supplies, sports equipment and other resources for children's programmes
- Buying individual drink bottles for children on programmes, these are children who would seldom be given anything just for them
- Developing and printing DVD and hard copy resources for parents
- Purchasing power point projector, laptop and digital camera for parent education
- Giving assistance towards a 24 hour telephone helpline service for parents
- Buying essential family safety items eg fire and heater guards, smoke detectors and batteries, safety gates, safety plugs, blankets and warm clothing
- Providing funding for children to attend local community events for children
- Painting of a 'zero tolerance to family violence' mural on a main street wall by local school children
- Providing funding for Big Brother, Big Sister Youth Mentoring programme
- Funding home support social work services
- Providing training and support for grandparents raising their grandchildren
While this particular campaign may be over, the importance of the child abuse prevention message continues. Let's all keep reminding ourselves that all our 'kids are unbeatable.'
>> Find out about Taupo Therapy Centers "kids are unbeatable" day. (August 2007. PDF 200KB)
A BIG THANK YOU TO THE 2007 VODAFONE WELLINGTON LIONS
Our highly successful twelve month 'charity of choice relationship' with The Vodafone Wellington Lions came to an end at the end of July. It has been a wonderfully successful year, with many benefits for Jigsaw and our member agencies and for children and families throughout New Zealand.
The relationship provided great exposure for Jigsaw and for the work Jigsaw and its member agencies do to help parents and families solve problems, make changes and raise their children safely so they can thrive. The Jigsaw logo and website appeared often on the big screen, the logo appeared in the match programmes and the PA announcer spoke about Jigsaw, the website and our 0800 number.
Members of The Vodafone Wellington Lions and their mascot Leo the Lion, came with the Jigsaw national office staff to Berhampore Primary School, in Berhampore, Wellington. Jigsaw CEO Strategic Relationships, Tau Huirama, spoke about the importance of fair play in sport which was very educational for the children. The players took the students for games of Rippa Rugby. The children really enjoyed mixing with the players and playing rugby with them. Some of the children got signed jerseys and balls as prizes which was very special for them.
We had a bucket collection at Tana Umaga's last game. Spectators at the game were very generous with their donations while stickers were given out which was great to promote Jigsaw. The team of Jigsaw volunteer collectors who braved the cold wet weather were rewarded with free tickets to the game, as well as tickets to the Taranaki and Southland games.
We were also given donated merchandise that we auctioned on Trademe. This helped raise funds for us, but more importantly gave us some great publicity for the work we do for children and families.
The team made a calendar as a project for their professional development. Part of the money from the calendars will be donated to Jigsaw. These funds will go towards new Jigsaw resources for parents and families. The calendars have a message on the back that talks about what Jigsaw is and what we do.
Through the relationship with the team, Jigsaw became a charity of ICAP on their charity day. ICAP is a financial brokering firm that donates its commission fees to charities on its annual charities day. This year we were fortunate to be chosen as one of the two charities they donated to. The money raised will be used to benefit children.
There have been many highlights of this relationship but the best one has been the buy in from the players. While they are men with high profile, they are also fathers, uncles, brothers and sons. It has been great to hear them talking about how important all children are.
Hearing the Vodafone Wellington Lions talking about children and the need to keep them safe and help them to thrive, will have got a lot of people thinking about how they can help the children in their lives be safe and happy.
We would like to publically thank the Vodafone Wellington Lions players, coaches and management team for the great work they did to help Jigsaw and children and families across New Zealand, last season. We wish the team the best of luck for the 2008 Air New Zealand Cup.
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