St John's Health Shuttle
Hi everyone
I just want to send out a shout out to the folk who organise and run the St John's Health Shuttle in North Canterbury. I'm in my forties and due to a heart condition have been unable to drive for three months. The Health shuttle has been a wonderful service with great volunteers I have been able to fall back on when friends have been unavailable to get me to medical appointments. They go above and beyond with door to door service (so no parking hassles) one way or both directions as needed, from Amberley south to Christchurch and everywhere in between. I have used them to get to radiology appointments as well as hospital appointments and they will take people to local appointments too; they also do post-hospital stay pick-ups. I have observed volunteers actually take passengers into their appointments in wheelchairs (as appropriate) to ensure safe handover to medical staff and to ensure the best care for passengers. In return they just ask for a donation to contribute towards petrol but this does not need to be paid on the day of use if you are financially challenged or using them frequently. You book by 2pm the previous day needed through North Canterbury Citizen's Advice Bureau but would recommend you book earlier as there are limited seats and they only run if they have bookings. Depending on passengers' appointments there may be waiting time but the one time this happened to me meant having a coffee at South City and getting some shopping done while there, so no great hardship. It would be great to think the word of this service could be spread so please share this post with friends and family.
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DOC is rolling out a new tool to help figure out what to tackle first when it comes to protecting our threatened species and the things putting them at risk.
Why does this matter? As Nikki Macdonald from The Post points out, we’re a country with around 4,400 threatened species. With limited time and funding, conservation has always meant making tough calls about what gets attention first.
For the first time, DOC has put real numbers around what it would take to do everything needed to properly safeguard our unique natural environment. The new BioInvest tool shows the scale of the challenge: 310,177 actions across 28,007 sites.
Now that we can see the full picture, it brings the big question into focus: how much do we, as Kiwis, truly value protecting nature — and what are we prepared to invest to make it happen?
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