Cyclone appeal fund: Pacific communities hit by floods urged to apply for assistance

Cyclone Gabrielle Appeal Trust Fund is targeting communities impacted across Aotearoa and Pacific peoples are being urged to take advantage of this.

The Category 3 storm caused widespread devastation to parts of the North Island in February, 2023.

Anyone from communities, iwi, hapū and marae in Northland, Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, East Coast and Hawkes Bay regions, and the Tararua District can apply for a grant from the $14 million available.

Applications opened on Wednesday and will close on 29 May.

Trustee Barbara Arnott said in areas impacted, the recovery for individuals and their houses, and the infrastructure for bridges, roads, for electric services, for water, is “absolutely critical”.

“The $14m is for small-scale projects so things that are probably under $30,000,” she told 531pi’s Pacific Mornings host Levi Matautia-Morgan on Friday.

“It could be like a new oven for a hall, helping to rebuild a playground for children, getting generators or satellite phones or anything for resilience in the future or anything that might bring a community together.”

Specific groups are eligible to apply, but do they have to be a registered charity or legal organisation?

“No, and that is the wonderful thing,” Arnott said. “You need to be a community and don't have to be registered or an organisation.

“The trustees do not want large, overriding sort of organisations to ask for the grant. We want communities and they can apply on the website, www.cycloneappeal.org.nz

“One trusted member of the community could just put an application in and they just need to say, this is who I am, this is who I represent.

“There’s heaps of help out there for them. They're not alone. If they go on the website, they'll find an email address that they can email if they need some help, because there's plenty of community connectors and liaison people who will leap in and help them make the application if they do happen to be having problems with it.”

Arnott said the decision on who gets the funding could be made as early as July.

“Literally within six months it should be all done and dusted, and communities should be getting on with their lives.”

More than $10m of the funds was raised through a special Lotto draw and appeal.

Arnott said the trust was set up to support the medium to long-term needs of communities, iwi and hapu as they recover from Gabrielle.

“That’s why we are targeting communities. For example, a community outside of Ruatoria where it had a drainage stream through their little village and they wanted it cleared of logs.

“They said they needed funds to plant more plants to beautify that area. It was enabling better flood protection in the future and it was connecting the community by bringing them together to do the planting. So that's exactly the sort of project that we would love to fund.”

“I would encourage any Pasifika community who have been affected by the cyclone or floods to look at what they might need and talk about it, whether it's within their community, within their church group, wherever.”

Watch the full interview with Barbara Arnott from the Cyclone Gabrielle Appeal Trust Fund: