"The Service we render to others is the rent we pay for our room on earth”….. a fabulous quote from a workshop at the Royal Federation March 2020 AGM and Conference held in Hawera.

February 2020 saw our 18 service desks look after 1980 clients, certify 5650 copies, complete 804 statutory declarations and 98 affidavits, witness 188 documents and handle 38 other related activities. Our Justice of the Peace work for February totaled nearly 259 hours.

Incredible statistics…..thank you very much to all our Justices’ who so generously give their time to work on our service desks helping the public.  

An additional thank you to our desk coordinators Neville Brown, John Pauwels, Barry Straight, Tony Gemmill, Liz Beaven, Neil Falconer, Rod Paton, Bronwyn Welsh, Bob Macgregor, Neil Price, Jean Taylor, Di Woodward, Murray Spackman, Wendy Doody, April Lander, Neil Shewan, Isobel Whyte, Jan Chisnall, Brent Philip and Lance Kenyon.

Sincere apology to Bob Macgregor for the spelling mistake of his surname in the service desk list which some Justices took on Saturday. The list has been corrected. Two of us were involved in producing this list……I won’t say anymore!!

Volunteer Work
I have just read the ”Canterbury Charity Hospital trust healing hands” autumn winter newsletter. An article in it states that according to Volunteering New Zealand, about 21.5% of New Zealanders contribute a total of around 60 million hours of volunteer labour each year. They say the median amount of time spent volunteering per person per year is 40 hours. For a large number of Justices’, if we added up the hours we personally work on service desks and in our homes, it would be much higher than 40.

New Certifying Stamp
We have just provided another stamp for use on our service desks to certify documents from an electronic source. The wording reads:

“Certified true copy of a document presented to me as an original viewed in electronic form and this printed copy is a true reproduction”

Signed……………

Dated ……………

We had these stamps made at Rubber Stamps by Montarga, 165 Ferry Road, Christchurch. The cost was approximately $45 if any Justice wants to order their own.  We have also provided a bottle of Trodat ink for each desk so the three other stamps we previously provided can be re-inked.

COVID –19
Of concern to us all is the Corona virus. The CJPA Council has suspended all Canterbury service desks effective from Friday 20 March 2020 as we have a duty of care to our volunteers, our clients, library staff, our community and our Country.  By holding our service desks we felt we were creating a gathering bringing people together and we should be trying to avoid that.

This decision won’t please everyone but I feel proud of our Council as we have been bold, shown leadership, used sound judgement and common sense in trying to reduce the spread of Corona virus.

Stay safe and well everyone.

Gwen Mitchell
Overall Coordinator
CJPA Service Desks