Tēnā koutou katoa

A quick update as you head into the term break.

As you will see from this update there is a lot of work going on at the national and regional level as we start to bring together the changes that the amalgamation process put in place.

We are really excited about the introduction of the new Student Management System (Discover) and the additional functionality that it will bring to Centres and Regions as we work with the developer to expand the system. It will allow us to provide better information to promote Playcentre Aotearoa, support Centres to manage the day to day operations and allow for a truly national approach to managing our information. And dare I say it – it might also mean less admin and more play! We appreciate it will mean getting used to a new system but the rewards will benefit Centres.

I met with the Trustee Board on Friday 28 June and it was an opportunity to focus on planning for our future with the emphasis on providing services to centres to retain licensing. This encompasses a wide range of issues and I look forward to outlining these in more detail as we make progress.

In the meantime I’ll leave you to catch up on the all the detail in this Bulletin but first I just need to give one update on the Lottery Grants scheme that will be important now and for the future. Again centralising this will take a lot of the follow up reporting away from Centres and we are already putting in place resources to manage this at the national level.

Lottery National Community Grants
We were previously advised that the Lottery National Community Grants was to replace the Community Organisation Grant Scheme (COGS) funding.

We have now had this clarified that as Centres are part of a national body they cannot apply to any Lottery Community committees at the national or regional level and need to apply through the Playcentre Aotearoa Grant Application Process via the Playcentre Aotearoa website.

If you have made an application to any of the national or regional Lottery Community Committees you will be required to withdraw this application and resubmit through the Playcentre Aotearoa Grant Application Process. To date we are only aware of three such applications from Centres and I will be contacting those applicants individually to include their application in the national application round via our process.

Again, thank you for your time in reading the Bulletin and for all you do for Playcentre Aotearoa. It is valued and we do appreciate that you have a choice and that you choose Playcentre.

Ka kite anō au i a koutou.

Sean McKinley