The Gift Of Water – Kāpiti and Coast Independent

I am making a bequest to UNICEF because of the range and complexity of relief work it has been doing for many decades. Playwright, Roger Hall

A bequest with a difference

By Roger Childs

unicef-nz Many people leave a legacy to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICF), which has been helping families around the world since 1946.

Anyone can, and in doing so you become a member of the Kora Lang Society. (See details at the end of the article.)

UNICEF’s work is helping vulnerable children and meeting their needs to be fed, housed, protected from disease, provided with clean water and given places where they can feel safe.

Sometimes people specify what they would like their bequest spent on. For Jennifer it was clean water in Africa.

Leaving a house to UNICEF

Residents fetch water at a water point in Amari Yewebesh Kebele in Amhara Region of Ethiopia 3 July, 2013. Photo by Jiro Ose Dr. Peter Salama, UNICEF Ethiopia Representative, left, and Denis Thieulin, Head of EU Delegation, visit WASH project in Amahara region.

Jennifer found out about the organisation in 2011 at the time when famine was raging in the Horn of Africa.

She was shocked by what she saw on television and in the papers, and resolved to do something positive to help.

She left her Auckland house to UNICEF with the instructions, that when she passed away, the proceeds from the sale were to be used to provide clean water for African children.

The organisation found a scheme in Ethiopia to use Jennifer’s legacy.

Water for life

On average a multi-village water system will cover an area of 20km² and have the capacity to supply sustainable water for many families, health facilities and schools. UNICEF New Zealand

Jennifer’s gift is now being used to build one of these systems. Clean, fresh water will soon be available for 34,000 people!

unicef-water-2 Once it is complete, the water will

~ supply 21 villages

~ provide for 6 schools with more than 6,600 children

~ be reticulated to a health centre and three other medical facilities.

In addition her legacy will go towards improving sanitation, health and nutrition services.

… although Jennifer isn’t here to see the impact of her gift, her generosity will have a lasting impact on thousands of young lives for generations to come. UNICEF New Zealand

(Leaving money in your will is one way of assisting UNICEF in its work. Contact Bequest Manager, John Daysh, to get more details: Freephone 0800 243 575 or email john@unicef.org.nz )

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100 Years Ago — and the Maori Long March begins

Māori politics was dominated by the influential MPs (and sometime Cabinet ministers) Māui Pōmare ( Waitara statue photo above) and Apirana Ngata.

The 1920's also saw the rise of Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana’s religious movement, and the emergence of Te Puea Hērangi in Waikato.

Ngata worked hard to foster Māori scholarship and education and preserve traditional arts and culture.

He convinced the government to establish a Board of Maori Ethnological Research (1923), a Maori Purposes Fund Control Board (1924) and a School of Maori Arts and Crafts in Rotorua (1927).

The Reform government also took the first, tentative steps towards settling longstanding Māori grievances.

Agreements with Te Arawa in 1922 and Ngāti Tūwharetoa in 1926 recognised their respective rights over the Rotorua lakes and Lake Taupō, and led to the establishment of trust boards with some government funding.

Commissions of inquiry which examined Ngāi Tahu grievances (1920–21) and the Waikato and Taranaki confiscations (1926–27) recommended that modest compensation be paid.