Welcome to our August eNewsletter. The Otago Community Trust team has had a busy couple of months since our earlier June eNewsletter.

Earlier this month before we re-entered Alert Level 2, I had the pleasure of spending part of the morning at Rosebank School in Balclutha. This was to officially launch the professional development programme behind the Future Focused Learning Impact project. At the end of 2019 Otago Community Trust was pleased to have approved a $500,000 grant to support a large cluster of schools across South Otago to further develop and enhance digital technology-based programmes.

Lead by Clutha Valley Primary School, the Learning Impact Fund grant will benefit a total of eighteen schools and four kindergartens located in the South Otago area. It was a real privilege to open the day and see such a wonderful passionate group of educators extending their knowledge for the benefit of our young learners.

As hopefully you are all aware, we had to make the difficult decision to postpone our Annual Public Meeting that was scheduled to be held on Tuesday the 25th of August in Oamaru.

We will keep everyone informed once we establish when, where and how we will have our Annual Public Meeting. Given the current environment it will likely be an online meeting. 

We appreciate that the community sector and community organisations will for a prolonged period still be impacted and face significant challenges due to the ripple effects of COVID-19. All community groups are welcomed and encouraged to speak to us about how we might be able to help support community organisations during the coming months.

If you have any questions around funding or funding timelines, don't hesitate to call us on 0800 10 12 40.

Barbara Bridger, CE