Where there is the desire for a community hub, how best can one be developed and built? Lessons from already-existing community hubs could help answer this question. No point in re-inventing wheels when you can hopefully borrow a few good spokes!!

Early community research undertaken as part of the Tatou West Harbour neighbourhood project revealed that local residents wished they could access a greater range of social services locally. People also talked about wanting a community drop-in space or facility that was theirs – something that would strengthen the sense of community and belonging in West Harbour too.

With a number of questions rattling around our heads, a group of us jumped into a van to go and visit three community hubs which are already functioning in Clendon, Northcote and Talbot Park in order to support Housing New Zealand Community Renewal Programmes in these areas. All three hubs were really different, but had similarities in terms of key basic facilities, and some real wisdom to share with us.

We went to the community hubs with lots of questions, including the following: what should or could a neighbourhood hub in West Harbour look like? What should be in it? How could we get local community involved in planning and making sure it really is ‘theirs’ too.

Despite wide-ranging differences, the three hubs generally included some or all of the following:

• a few meeting spaces, kitchen, an office base for local HNZC tenancy managers and ‘hot desk’ spots for other visiting service providers,
• a tool library,
• community garden,
• a community development worker,  and
• a community home ‘handy-man’.

In the van on the way back out West, we shared the following thoughts on what we’d seen and learnt:

• There’s no one size fits all, each hub has to fit the community need and context for what’s going on around it” “Going from working in the toy library to leading the residents group – that’s what I call building community leadership skills”
• “It’s the simple things that matter, you don’t have to do big things to have a huge knock on effect” “When good things are happening, good people come on board”
• “You can’t do community renewal projects without engaging people and their ‘whole’ lives” “I loved the tool library and toy library and community gardens – things that can bring people of all ages into a community hub.”

And we also reflected on a few words of wisdom from one of the fantastic community development workers we met:

• “Do what you say you’re going to do”
• “Take others’ ideas and help deliver really visible things”
• "Build trust, faith and encourage others to engage with communities you’re working alongside”
• “Everyone’s got talent, you just need to find it.”

Megan Courtney