17-05-2025
Group set on celebrating town's cultures
Haere Mai's last international potluck dinner was a great success with the Lake Hāwea community. PHOTOS: SUPPLIED
Hāwea locals are determined to bring together the town's multicultural community despite difficulties in outreach.
Colleen Carr has for many years been the proud leader of Haere Mai, a group dedicated to celebrating Lake Hāwea's growing diversity.
The group has held events and run English classes to help its migrant community feel at home while also introducing longtime locals to more cultural diversity.
Although the group has had its ups and downs over the years, Ms Carr and her devoted committee continue to work hard on something they are passionate about.
"When we started it, it was amazing the support the community gave us because we enjoy the diversity," Ms Carr said.
The group first started around seven years ago and was a success until Covid put a temporary stop to activities.
Haere Mai Hāwea group founder Colleen Carr.
Committee member Florence Meyer.
It began with English lessons for migrants at Ms Carr's house and quickly blossomed into a community of people who gathered to try new food, play sport and get to know different people.
Florence Meyer is part of the group's committee and Ms Carr's first English student.
Having moved to Hāwea from Hong Kong with her husband and two children in 2017, she joined Ms Carr's classes to strengthen her English and meet new people.
Ms Meyer was eager when Ms Carr later approached her and other migrant families with an idea to start a multicultural group.
The group's committee is now a diverse mix of local migrants and includes German, Japanese, Chinese and Filipino members.
They have more recently held family barbecues, sports days and a cooking demonstration where Ms Meyer showed the group how to make dumplings.
Attendance had fluctuated over the years, and both Ms Carr and Ms Meyer said getting migrant families to join in on these events had not been easy.
"Partly they don't read communications. Sometimes they're shy to come out and do things socially," Ms Car said.
Ms Meyer added that although they did get some migrants and many locals it was sometimes hard to find new migrants, especially when there was no proper social service in Lake Hāwea for migrants.
"I don't know how to reach out to these people because we don't know when they arrive or if they need help or anything like that."
Ms Carr said she had started working with local schools to give her a list of migrant students and their families, whom she then contacted to see if they needed support.
Regardless of the difficulties, both Ms Carr and Ms Meyer are not ready to give up.
Ms Carr highlighted the importance of have a supportive community for migrants, who faced their own set of challenges trying to settle in a new place.
She especially focused on brining women together as she felt they were often the ones who struggled more in an immigrant family.
"The thing that worries me is especially the women become very isolated ... I think the women often don't have support systems because they've come from another country and we would like to think that we can offer them support systems."
