Had the first MADD event today. A bunch of us went up the the ranui campground and did a sausage sizzle, lolly scrambles, A Santa who gave out christmas pressies, provided drinks, chips etc.

The Ranui campground could best be desribed as low socio economic. It was an incredibly sad place really, mothers on their owns with three plus kids in a caravan or a small cabin. Ok, so adults have choices about where they will live etc, but what about the kids. They dont get to choose where they grow up. Apparently the place was full of gang members, drug addicts and alcoholics. L said when they were going round knocking, many didnt answer or were very clearly stoned or pissed. The whole experience while it was a touch scary was also very profound specially with mums comming up to thank us, because they werent going to have anything special for Christmas nor were their kids going to have anything amazing for christmas...

It got me thinking to the CIC summer impact. A group of young adults go to a campground over the summer, and basically help out, do summer holiday programes for the kids etc. It sounds all very cool on the surface, however when its a campgroud like Pauanui or one of those, where rich aucklanders vacate to for the summer, how much of an amazing thing is it. I remember feeling awefully disapointed last year when I was told I couldnt go on summer impact. The few hours we spent out at Ranui today, were more impacting that a whole ten days on summer impact could have been, and it was much cooler because it felt like we were meeting a genuine need