"Let's Get It Done" Weekend Big Success in Christchurch

RebuildChristchurch.co.nz has hailed its inaugural “Let’s Get It Done Weekend” as a huge success.
 

RebuildChristchurch founder, Deon Swiggs says residents were thrilled to see people wanting to help them, and the number of registered volunteers was further boosted with additional volunteers just turning up on Saturday morning on the off chance they could help.

“Some jobs required far more bodies than we had thought,” says Swiggs. “For example, at one silt clearing job, ten people worked for most of the day clearing the muck from a number of properties down a lane in Wainoni. We are forwarding the addresses with silt sitting outside, to city councillor Glenn Livingstone who attended in the afternoon, and he is passing that information on to the council, so they can remove the silt from the street.”

Deon Swiggs says the weekend’s efforts saw around 30 jobs completed by approximately 80 volunteers. The Student Volunteer Army had another list of jobs from the Red Cross and from RebuildChristchurch, and they worked in the City, Tai Tapu and Lyttelton.
 

“We had two jobs that couldn’t be completed because they needed tradesmen, two where people weren’t home and two where special equipment was needed, like a water blaster,” he says.

Swiggs says it became increasingly clear to the RebuildChristchurch team on Saturday that many people, mainly the elderly, are still reluctant to ask for help as they feel others are worse off than they are.
“These people need to be helped and perhaps the time has come for local councillors and or MP’s or council staff to physically go around the really hard hit eastern suburbs to do an audit on who needs help,” he says.
 

According to Swiggs, one elderly woman drove to the Wainoni Church where the teams were based, to see if someone could come and fix her cupboard doors as she had been unable to open her oven door since February because the cupboards weren’t shutting properly.
“One of our volunteers is a builder and he went home, got his tools and fixed her cupboards. Now she can open her oven!” says Deon.

The volunteers came from all walks of life – from a team of young girls from St Margaret’s College to mums and dads – and their children. One volunteer said he wanted to come and help because he is in the northwest of ChCh, has had little damage himself.
“We also met a woman in a house who had no food and needed it urgently. We bought some food for her from the local supermarket and gave her contact details for a local agency that should be able to help her. This reiterated for us all how important it is that we get to know the people in our communities so we can help them, even if they are reluctant to come forward themselves,” says Deon.

RebuildChristchurch.co.nz says it looks as though another weekend will be needed, as media coverage late last week saw a late flurry of requests for help. As many as possible were included in the schedule however there are still around 14 to complete, which includes the six that could not be completed this weekend for a variety of reasons.
 

“People are living in the red zone, in houses that are broken and damaged, and many have no other choice at the moment, so if clearing silt and debris from those properties helps to make their lives more bearable in the short term, then that is what we must do,” Deon says.

RebuildChristchurch.co.nz turned 1 year old on Saturday and Deon says the site continues to grow with tens of thousands of visitors every week.

“We had 136,000 hits last Monday when the Government made its white to green zone announcement. People know they will get the latest, independent information from the site as well as being able to engage and post information and images, themselves,” he said.

The website has a unique information gathering system, developed by Swiggs and rebuildchristchurch.co.nz web developer and manager, Ben Young.

“We call it “The Muncher” and it pulls information and media releases from all the official earthquake organisations as they release them or post them,” says Swiggs. “It is so efficient that rebuildchristchurch.co.nz posts the information at almost the same time as the source of the information, whether that’s EQC, CERA, the City Council or any other official earthquake organisation”, says Swiggs.

RebuildChristchurch.co.nz says requests have continued to come in, from residents needing help and so it looks very likely that another Let’s Get It Done” weekend will be needed.