Tim Park from Wellington is volunteering in Tanzania with V.S.A. and shares his stories and photographs with us.

By Omar Hamed

As I walked up the tree lined driveway to school one morning I was confronted by an interesting juxtaposition. A large Document Destruction Service truck pulled up next to the schools offices. What was the DDS doing outside Senior Management’s offices? Were they getting rid of unfavourable Education Review Office reports or the expenses lists for the Principals recent excursion to Wellington? The answer will doubtless remain a mystery thanks to a tax-payer funded document destruction. The truck drove away and suddenly the ironic site of the DDS outside an education institution was gone.

By Eva Lawrence
When was the last time that you could pick up a paper or turn on the T.V. and not see images of yet another disaster to, more often that not, strike some poor area of the world?

In the last twelve months we have seen the earthquake and following tsunami in South Asia (Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar), the earthquake in South Asia (Pakistan, Kashmir, India & Afghanistan), droughts in Darfur, Northern Sudan as well as disasters with less casualties such as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, USA, and then there are all the ones we don’t hear about.

Between August and October 2005 a group of dedicated students from Athena Montessori College in Wellington started investigating poverty.

They ended up painting a mural at the intersection of Ghuznee and Willis Streets in Wellington.

Big props to the students from Unlimited Paenga Tawhiti in Christchurch who ran a rally in the Square and held a forum about poverty.