KEELAN WALKER
Founding members of the Village to Village Charitable Trust, Sarah Bates, Tracy Atkin and Alex Barton.
Cooking up some practical help For around seven months of each year the population in our region swells by a significant number as a result of the arrival of Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) workers from the Pacific Islands. A local charity aims to ensure the workers go home with more than a paycheck as Renée Lang finds out.
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or many of the Pacific Islanders who spend months working in our vineyards the rewards are obvious – an opportunity to gain experience in the viticulture and horticulture industries and earn enough money to take home with them at the end of each season.
Marlborough recognised that any help that could be given to the workers in the context of resources, technology, funding and education that they could take home with them could make a real difference. And so the Village to Village Charitable Trust was founded.
Their hard-earned dollars go a long way towards improving life for their families and communities who for the most part live without the facilities and technology that we in New Zealand take for granted.
Sarah Bates, her mother Jill Moorhouse, Tracy Atkin and Alex Barton had all been mentors on the Entrepreneurial Women with Purpose Impact Education Programme run by Catherine van der Meulen during which time they mentored seven women from Vanuatu in business skills including financial literacy leading to those women going on to create a small business of their own.
Although the RSE scheme has been in place for some years now, it was only in late 2019 that several businesswomen in
People helping people. At BDO Marlborough we put people first, that’s why we’re supporting the Village to Village Charitable Trust by providing our accounting and advisory services free of charge. RSE workers are vital to the success of our Viticulture Industry, and we’re proud to work with the Trust to make a positive impact on their communities at home.
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