Realising Potential
“That’s our vision - that the endowment fund keeps doing what it’s doing now - helping organisations that support our target group in our community.”
Opportunity and potential – these are what lie at the heart of The Kāpiti Community Enterprises Forever Fund.
Since 2014, the Fund has been supporting people living with an intellectual disability or struggling with mental health issues to find meaningful employment or engage in further education so they can contribute to their community.
But the Fund’s roots stretch back further, to 2006 and a horticulture business established by Rod and Carol Lingard and four fellow Kāpiti residents.
“We felt that the Kapiti Coast was not well served with facilities for people with mental health issues – funding often seemed to run out before it got to the Coast.
“So, we thought ‘what can we do?’ We decided to set up a trust to run a native plant nursery where we would run courses training people in horticulture, and actually pay them … and then try to find long term work for them,” says Carol.
The success of their plan is not only evident in the roadside planting and sand dune reclamation in the area but in the lives of people who attended the three-month NZQA recognised course.
The course provided launching pad for the future graduates who were either living by themselves, under care, or supported in the community, to reach their potential.
Rod says for many the course was about much more than learning the horticultural-ropes. “It provided an opportunity to gain confidence by doing things that they hadn’t done before, mixing and talking to people, making friends, having routine, getting the comradery of a workplace.
“And they didn’t necessarily find jobs in the gardening business. One graduate now advises police on how to deal with people with mental health issues.”
Rod, who had recently retired, undertook a whole new career running the seven-day-a-week-365-day-a-year operation which had a contract with the council to provide plants for beautification of the area.
After six years, with the council contract up for renewal, circumstances of the trustees changing, and Rod ready to take a step back, it was time to look to the future, says Carol.
“We’d built up about $170,000. We looked at whether we’d carry on and use the funds to employ somebody, but you had to get someone really quite special that not only knew plants but could work with the people and do the accounts.
“We did look at the option of investing the money, carrying on the trust and give grants out ourselves but I think we all wanted to move on to something else.
Finding a good fit with Nikau
Rod and Carol knew about the Nikau Foundation and believed it had the potential to ensure they and their fellow trustees could continue to support their community.
“I thought it was a really good idea to establish a fund and so did Carol, so we talked to the other trustees about putting our surplus funds into Nikau with the same purpose of helping the people within the Kāpiti community with mental health issues and intellectual disabilities,” says Rod.
Since then that much-needed support has been, and continues to be, directed towards a range of organisations including Lifting the Lid, a suicide prevention programme for college students, Enable which supports people with mental health issues and intellectual disabilities, and disability service provider Hohepa Homes.
A secure future
The relationship with Nikau is a good one – and one that will last, says Rod.
“Nikau is a really professional organisation that has all the procedures in place that will help our fund reach its objective. We have complete confidence that the goal of our endowment fund will be fulfilled with the income going where we intended, in perpetuity,” he says.
“That’s our vision,” says Carol, “that the endowment fund keeps doing what it’s doing now - helping organisations that support our target group in our community.”
To find out more about setting up a Forever Fund, click here.
