The Student Volunteer Army (SVA) is answering the call from nearly 20 people who need help with the clean-up of properties in the wake of the flooding.
Head of its programmes, Catherine Robertson, says the student volunteers carried out their first clean-up on a Motueka Valley farm last week, removing debris from fences and with the floodwaters subsiding further, is now matching up volunteers with requests.
She says SVA is actively matching responses with volunteers and has seen a huge number of high school and tertiary-aged students putting their hands up to volunteer. So far, it has had 58 young people register to help. Among them is a Nelson College student wanting to organise a school response, as well as two students from Motueka High School who volunteered on a farm clean-up last week and are planning on getting more student volunteers from the school.
“What we are seeing is that our youth of today are actively seeking opportunities to serve their community.”
SVA has set up a system for managing incoming requests for help so they are triaged daily.
Catherine says SVA is sponsored by AA Insurance and Hummingbird Coffee, which enables it to respond to events such as the flooding. Two of the AA Insurance customer response team were also at last week’s clean-up alongside SVA.
