| 137 T T Rosa Watson Building community in South Dunedin A current project is working with the local community gardens to raise their profile, bolster involvement, volunteer numbers, and in turn food security in the community. COMMUNITY Dream South D A community organisation in South Dunedin is helping to bring dreams to life for the area, with a number of bold and colourful projects already completed. Dream South D is part of the Department of Internal Affairs’ community-led development partnership programme. It receives funding from the department for five years to facilitate community-led projects in South Dunedin. “In a nutshell, we are all about making great stuff happen in South Dunedin,” explains project coordinator Rosie Hill. She says Dream South D delivers projects based on community feedback. “Part of our role is about uplifting the mahi of other groups in the community, alongside delivering projects under our own steam.” A current project is working with the local community gardens to raise their profile, bolster involvement, volunteer numbers, and in turn food security in the community. Another project involves gathering knowledge of past local characters, places of interest or past events to celebrate and showcase the diverse and unique history of the community, which will be made into signs and installed around the area to build on pride of place. The community plan guides the work Dream South D does, and was developed from community engagement undertaken in 2022/2023. Projects are required to fit into three themes – getting together, looking good, and getting around. Getting together is aimed at providing more opportunities for community connection, looking good is aimed at sprucing up the area by making it more vibrant and increasing greenery and nature in the community, and getting around is aimed at accessibility and making it easier and more enjoyable for residents to move around. “We aim to support a range of projects that hit each of these themes,” Rosie says. In a milestone for the organisation this year, the team moved into new offices in April. “This means we have a place that is easily accessible to the community, right on the main street in the heart of South Dunedin. Local developer Justin Stott owns the building and worked with us to fit out our office space, resulting in a beautiful and fit-for-purpose space.” In conjunction with the office open day, the group ran a plant giveaway where they gave away 50 native plants to residents and community groups in South Dunedin. Other recent projects were installing two community notice boards outside the South Dunedin Community Hall, and hosting two free community skip days in August. “We had skips available for the community to bring their general household rubbish at two central locations, across two weekends.” Despite the cold and wet weather, it was a great turn out, Rosie says. “We had 100 carloads of rubbish brought in, which filled five large skips.” They have also worked alongside Plunket and Sport Otago to put on Play Parks events for the school holidays. “We had a great turnout with whānau and tamariki enjoying the play equipment and free barbecue lunch.” Being a five-year partnership, Rosie says it could be challenging managing what could be achieved in the timeframe remaining. “Larger projects can be lengthy and sometimes reliant on other stakeholders. Being a new group means we have to build relationships with stakeholders, and it takes time. This also applies when we look at adding amenities to our area for example – who will take ownership of these and look after them in the long term?” Rosie says the goal was to work alongside businesses interested in sponsoring parts of projects or donating their time or expertise to assist with projects.
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