Meet your Neighbours

Dunedin (Wednesday 27 February) - Neighbours Day will be celebrated across Aotearoa over the weekend of 23-24 March 2013. It is an opportunity to connect with the people that live behind, beside, in front of and across the road from you.

Neighbours Day Aotearoa began in Auckland in 2009 and has been celebrated in Dunedin since 2010.

The Neighbours Day Dunedin Steering Group, which includes Otago Neighbourhood Support, Methodist Mission, Time Bank Dunedin, Malcam Trust, Presbyterian Support, Brockville Community Development Project, North East Valley Community Development Project, and the Dunedin City Council, formed this year to promote Neighbours Day around the city, to residents, businesses, schools and organisations as a way to increase participation and to cement Neighbours Day’s place in Dunedin’s calendar.

The steering committees ran a ‘Neighbours Day Dunedin’ banner design competition targeted at primary school aged children. The winner of the competition is Jordan Miller (11 years) whose winning design (above) will be used on banners and flags to promote Neighbours Day Dunedin throughout the city.

Resource packs and information about how to celebrate Neighbours Day 2013 in Dunedin is available at www.neighboursday.org.nz and the DCC’s Customer Services Centre. The Neighbours Day Dunedin Facebook page is also promoting community events.

Neighbours Day aims to turn strangers into neighbours, streets into neighbourhoods. It’s not about big events, but rather about thousands of kiwis taking time to engage in small, local acts of neighbourliness, over a weekend. It might be a first wave or smile, a chat over the fence, inviting a neighbour in for a cup of tea or holding a street barbeque. Put simply, it’s about going one step further in getting to know those next door.

Kia Ora, Goeie More, Malo e leilei, Namoshkar, Ni Hao, Saitahay, Talofa, Bog, G’day, Jambo, Apakhabar, Chao, Namaste, Ahoj, Oy, Dydd da, Merhaba, Halo and sign language - do you know there are more than 100 ways to say hello to your neighbours in New Zealand?

© Scoop Media