Sarah | Manurewa

“I was born in New Plymouth. I grew up there. It’s my home. I’m so connected to that place, and then three years ago I moved up to Auckland to study criminology and conflict resolution.

I’m studying fulltime, in my last year, graduate hopefully at the end of this year. Yeah and then I’m looking for some sort of work in the industry, but for me the greater purpose behind everything that I do comes back to my church, comes back to giving out, like the right sort of messages and being a positive influence for young people as well. That’s what really I love, and my heart is really just to combine that with my passion for criminology, and see how I can put those two things together to make something cool happen, yeah.

A random act of kindness that I’ve done for someone else is, when I was at the supermarket and there was a older man in front of me and he was like, $2 short of the amount of cash that he needed for his groceries, and so I gave him $2. But also I’m actually a member of the Movement Youth, which is a group of young people. It’s based in Manukau, who help out with that sort of thing. So every year we have a program called RAK, which stands for Random Acts of Kindness, and we actually go out into the streets and do a whole lot of random acts of kindness, pretty much. So that happens every year in Labour Weekend.

In my youth group we do this thing called RAK every year. We have an annual conference which is held just up the road in Manukau where we, have young people from our youth groups all over New Zealand gathering together in South Auckland. It’s organised really well, and everyone’s split up into little groups and we’re given a certain amount of money where we go out into the community and do things like paying for people’s groceries, paying for people’s gas, buying a whole lot of burgers from McDonalds and handing them out to people in the park. Just random things like that, and the goal behind it is just show generosity and be kind, but for me it’s always quite interesting to think about, you know, why is that we need a special day or a special event or a special weekend to do these random acts of kindness?

Why isn’t it just all the time, you know, and it’s something that I’m always struck up about is that this should be happening all the time. I remember one experience that I had during our RAK event with my youth group. We were in Ōtara at a supermarket and we paid for one lady’s groceries and she just, she just broke down crying. You know? She was just like, why? Why are you paying for my groceries? And we just kind of said, oh you know, we’re just out here just doing kind things for people, because why not? Um, and she broke down and she ended up telling us that she was really struggling at home financially, spiritually, everything. She really just was quite lost and didn’t have a whole lot of money.

So for us, paying for her groceries was really significant, and it meant a lot to her, and after that we ended up praying for her, just really showed a lot of love and respect for her, and that’s the greater meaning behind things like that, being kind, is just showing the love that Jesus gives us. So we prayed for her and then she got connected with our church, and that’s really cool eh? When it’s not just a one-off kind thing, when you can put your random act of kindness into like a lifelong thing? Yeah, I think that’s like the biggest meaning behind that sort of thing. So I think in terms of interacting with strangers, like being from a small town, New Plymouth, everyone kind of knows everyone, and when you walk in the street, whether you’re in town, whether you’re by your house, we always say hi to people. You always say hi to people.

It doesn’t matter who they are. You just say hello, or you smile at them or you wave at them, or whatever. It’s just, it’s just generosity. It’s just being kind, but there is, I feel like there is this weird kind of stigma here in Auckland where you can’t, you don’t do that, like that’s weird. If you say hi to someone in the street or if you greet them, it’s weird and it’s uncomfortable. Like, I don’t understand why that is, but I think that’s something that we as the people of Auckland, or as the people that at least live here, we have the power to shape that.

So I think it’s really important to just at least acknowledge those that are around us, and to not be afraid of people who might be from different culture or different experience or anything like that.

The last time I felt connected to my culture? It’s a hard question. I feel like for me personally even though I’m New Zealand European by blood, I was brought up around the Māori culture. I was brought up around Māori people, and so for me, even though it’s not my blood, that’s still my culture.

So for me, it’s just anytime I can be around people really, and talk to people about who they are and where their experience is from, and learning about different people and where they come from and what they call home. For me, culture isn’t necessarily what you were by blood. It’s what you feel connected to. So, for me it’s church. Church is my culture. Church is what I love. Church is what I thrive off. You know? So, every time I feel connected to my culture, it’s when I’m at church or when I’m doing something that recognises what I believe in.

I think the last heart to heart conversation that I had with a loved one was with my uncle and his wife, who have just come back into New Zealand. So it was the first time I’ve seen them in like two and a half years, and I called them, and just had a discussion with them about their life, and their plans really, because they live in Australia, but they’re having another baby, and so I had a heart-to-heart with them, just kind of about life, the meaning of life and why we’re here, and what, I guess your greater purpose is. That was, that was pretty deep, yeah.

The last time I can remember connecting with a stranger was when I was flying home from New Plymouth to Auckland, and I met this guy on the plane who I sat next to. I literally just sat down and started talking to him.

It turns out that he was from Trinidad, and his partner lived up here in Auckland, and he was based in New Plymouth and he worked for an oil company. It was really cool sitting on the plane just having like a 50 minute conversation with this random guy. It just reminds you that, you know, we’re so busy in life doing things, that we just forget to just embrace each other and get to know people. That’s something that, it actually really hit me that day when I was talking to this stranger, to not be too busy to just get to know random people.”

 

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