Photo: UnSplash/ Carl Tronders
A Rotorua man has rallied about a dozen young people to give their neighbourhood a festive spruce-up.
Thomas Peato, a youth mentor at Waiariki Whānau Mentoring, and local rangatahi gathered once a week through December for a full day of maintenance work, he told RNZ's The run home to Christmas.
They mowed the lawns, trimmed the berms and cleared the roadside rubbish, including takeaway packaging and tyres.
Peato said he was born and raised in the suburb of Fordlands, which is a low social-economic area and looked a bit rough.
"It needed it and I believe that a healthy environment helps mould a happy mind and a happy mind helps mould a happy environment," he said.
"I just wanted to get in position and get momentum going to uplift and clean the area for our people."
He said the idea started about 10 years ago. Peato and his friends and relatives started to help cleaning the streets until the Covid-19 pandemic happened.
They have been trying to get the programme off the ground since and finally made it happen a month ago.
Peato said they noticed that on the third or fourth time when they were cleaning the streets, local residents started to get behind it, doing their lawns on the same day, for example.
"We also had some locals dropping us off drinks and ice blocks and all that kind of stuff too, so it was good, really uplifting for the community," Peato said.
The group will consider if they will keep it going next year once the holiday period was over.
The teenagers helping him grew up in similar backgrounds to him, from loving families but low social-economic areas, and the experience would give them confidence.
Peato said it was often hard for these young people to get into employment partly due to the background they came from and he also wanted to start some sustainable businesses to help employ them.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
