Taranaki TimeBank and Sustainable Taranaki are both working towards the same goal: building sustainable and resilient communities through conscious relationships. Our partnership unites us in our goal of creating connections for those who want to grow and learn.

Thank you to Claire Mullin, who is the first to share her family’s sustainable initiatives with us. Claire is based in rural Opunake. Her family produces their own meat and milk; they have pigs, sheep and cows; and are trying to reduce their home expenses by producing more of their own food.

It was a lovely Wednesday evening at the TSB Hub in Hawera for the second screening of 2040, filled with lively and interactive conversations with community members, who shared their enthusiasm in living more sustainably and proposed some great ideas to further improve our current practices.

Pine Forest consists of nine "totems of timber” made of H3 wood offcuts which have been discarded by local construction sites around Taranaki and collected by Rose. She gives new life to these misfit pieces by fitting them together like an intricate jigsaw puzzle.

It's been a positive start to the new year for the Impact project with the good news that we have secured funding from the Ministry of Youth Development for another year. This is good news indeed and means we can roll out the programme until July 2021.

Friends of Sustainable Taranaki, old and new, gathered to watch the screening of 2040, a positive stance on climate change and examples of how sustainable initiatives happening right now can result in a wave of potentially ideal outcomes for our future.

In April this year local inspiration and founder of Crop Swap Aotearoa, Franziska von Hünerbein, travelled to Scotland to participate in the Climate Change and Consciousness 2019 conference. We asked her if she would share some reflections on her experience so that the community can benefit from her journey. Here's what she said.