Windfall for Hawke’s Bay Sports Park

A $200,000 donation from the Eastern and Central Community Trust for the Hawke’s Bay Regional Sports Park will help complete development of netball courts and football fields at the Percival Road site.

Community Trust Donations Manager Bev Watkins says the donation reflects trust support for the large numbers of players and spectators of netball and football in the wider Hawke’s Bay region. Eight sports fields are planned, including one of artificial turf, which can be used for touch rugby during the summer. There are 18 netball courts being constructed, with half to have lighting for night games.

Hastings’ Smith family, which operates Hastings Pak’nSave, has provided naming rights sponsorship for the netball courts.

Changing facilities and meeting rooms are being included in the grandstand building which is currently being constructed as part of the 30 hectare sports park.

Another Hastings organisation, displaced by redevelopment of Nelson Park, is also benefitting from a community trust donation. The Hastings Air Training Corps, which has operating in Hastings since 1941, has relocated to the Hawke’s Bay and East Coast Aero Club at Bridge Pa and is in the process of building new facilities.

The Training Corps has had its biggest intake of new cadets this year and is keen to complete its new drill hall which will enable it to operate from a single site. The donation will help line and insulate its new hall.

The community trust has approved a $20,000 donation towards the cost of the work.

Two other sporting donations go to Basketball Hawke’s Bay, towards the cost of setting up an academy, and to Napier Old Boys’ Marist Rugby Club, which is planning to build a children’s playground at Park Island. The community trust donation of $8,000 kick starts the playground fundraising. The equipment will be available for club members’ children but fenced off for security when the club’s facilities are closed.

The $9,500 Basketball Hawke’s Bay donation will lower the cost and encourage children to participate in a basketball academy aimed at helping young people to change their lifestyles through sports participation, particularly at after-school and school holiday programmes.

Help for sick and neonate babies

Hawke’s Bay babies needing urgent transfer out of the region for specialist treatment will soon be transported in a high tech, specially designed baby pod following a donation from the Eastern and Central Community Trust.

The baby pod will be used by Hawke’s Bay Air Ambulance, which flies, on average, eight babies a month to other hospitals around New Zealand. The baby pod is a light weight capsule. It replaces traditional incubators, which weigh around 160 kilograms and require two people for lifting onto aircraft.

The pods can be easily lifted by one person, keep the baby as stable as possible during bumpy transfers and at a comfortable temperature, and are easily lifted and fitted into aircraft. They have a carbon fibre shell, lined with shock absorbent foam, a transparent lid and a warming vacuum mattress.