Our wahine tauira received an invitation to join “Wahine in the Workforce” and “Women in Infrastructure”.

Our first invite, we took our wahine through the new Blomfield building prior to its official opening. This was part of the BECCA and CANAM staff-hosted WIN (Women In Infrastructure) night on the school grounds. On the way we managed to catch a brief glimpse of the new two storey building that will house our new kura.  

We were able to see the open plan layout of the Blomfield building. We went outside to the lovely area that is reserved for play and recreation. CANAM staff were available to walk us through every step of the construction, including the completed Blomfield build. Thank you to our guide Maree at CANAM.

The invitation was extended by Fulton Hogan and Connexis for our Wahine to participate in the “Girls in Hi Vis” program, which was held in Whangarei. Our girls had the chance to experience what the Fulton Hogan wahine do. These wahine are amazing, they can do anything and everything.

Our wahine had the opportunity to meet some of the current and former cadets, who work for Fulton Hogan everyday - in  the office, on the roads and everywhere in between. We also met with our local MP, the Mayor, the Northland Manager of Fulton Hogan and Connexis representatives. We started the day with a talk about who Connexis are, who the Cadets were, the work that is done at Fulton Hogan and the potential of developing and advancing while completing a cadetship. We then split into groups and had the opportunity to experience what a Cadetship entails. 

The first group tested out the digger, and  our girls smashed this out of the park. Some very fine motor skills there. The second round we went to the office, this involved solving some maths problems. We might have to work on this one a bit.  But hey, when we went outside to apply our mathematical deductions into a real-world setting (and try out some cool tools) we again came into our own. We even had the honourable Mayor Vince Cocurullo, a civil engineer by trade, provided us with some pointers.

Thanks to Porter hire, Connexis and Fulton Hogan for providing lunch, we had sausages and bacon sandwiches that were yummy. Following lunch was the last retention, this one was a hard one and even myself (Toni) was not allowed to avoid it. Before being strapped into a harness or thrown into the truck to learn how cones are deployed and recovered from a moving vehicle, we were all given a safety briefing. Under strict supervision, we worked in pairs. One person would feed the cones to the other person who would put the cones out, then we would rotate around and gather the cones and re-stack them. At the end of the rotation our  wonderful wahine supervisor then showed us how to set up a road sign. 

Before leaving, we reconvened in the workshop for a Q&A session. I'd like to thank Jhaylar, Anaika-Bella, Winnie, Arleyah, and Ariany (our Brazilian exchange student), for giving everything a go and interacting with everyone and asking some great questions. With the next group of girls through our Kura, I hope we get the chance to do this again.

 Again a great big thank you to CANAM, BECCA, Connexis and Fulton Hogan.

Checkout the photos - WIN & Girls in Hi-Vis