Home & community

If you are new to an area you may find it's not as easy to make friends without the things that made introductions easier in early life. There are new strategies you can adopt. It's all about making your new introductions as natural as possible and it often means going...

If you support businesses in your local area: and if the business is locally owned, then you are supporting another community member, who, in turn, puts money back into the local economy; you’re helping to provide employment opportunities so that people don’t need to move away to find work; you’re...

Working past 65 is fast becoming the norm in New Zealand; in fact, almost half of people aged between 65 – 69 are still in paid employment in New Zealand. People will have their own reasons for wanting to work into their later years; for some it’s about contributing their...

Not only does volunteering have a positive impact on the economy, but also the community and the volunteers themselves. The most common reasons people give for doing voluntary work are: being helpful to others, “paying back” to society, and having a sense of obligation to the future generations. It is...

I’m worried about my neighbour. She’s seems quite private and looks very frail. Sometimes I don’t see any movement at her place for days on end. Should I go and check on her? We live in a society where many people have highly valued privacy and individual responsibility and freedom,...

What community means is a big subject. For some it means very little and for others it’s a daily lived experience. It is something we're likely to have to consider as the new health system rolls out its locality based services. We'll talk about this more as the plan become...