Realising 2030 – one year in
Realising 2030 is our plan to achieve Strategy 2030 — helping us become a modern, sustainable organisation that’s better placed to improve the lives of vulnerable people.
In 2020, our organisation launched Strategy 2030. We then worked with our people to decide how we could best achieve this vision through Realising 2030. In September 2022 we released the Realising 2030 decisions that set the shape of our organisation and started us on the journey to realise the goals in Strategy 2030.
Hear our Secretary General Sarah Stuart-Black give an update on our progress one year in.
I want to thank you for your hard work over the last year. We're now one year into our Realising 2030 journey and I want to really recognise everyone's support and the build up to decisions last year and in this first complex year of implementation.
I know it's taken a huge amount of effort but we're really starting to see some of those benefits for us playing out. Our organisation as you know has undergone a significant structural change over this last year and our people will continue to work hard to provide support to the communities that we serve.
We know we want to be future-fit, we know that we want to make sure that we address the issues that you told us about during the consultation last year, and we also want to make sure that we're building those really strong foundations for the future of our organisation.
The new Area model is now up and running and is being supported by our Area Support Teams who are coming up to speed really quickly. We're now working through roles and responsibilities to better understand how we can work together most effectively when we're supporting our communities. We’ve identified our Te Ao Māori program as one of our top three priorities for our organisation this year and we've been investing in the capability of our people to work with mana whenua to also support our communities. Through the Aronui training program, we're developing our people in Te Ao Māori, te reo Māori and also in Titiriti o Waitangi and it's a great step for us.
Organisationally, work is also underway to improve our financial sustainability including through the Climate Charter targets that we've set for this financial year. And we're also working on a diversity and inclusion framework that will help us to better support those in our organisation and having a more diverse workforce but also making sure that we reflect the very communities that we serve.
Thank you for sharing your passion, your enthusiasm and your ongoing commitment to Red Cross over this last year. These are huge collective achievements and I'm incredibly proud of all of them. Next year we'll be continuing to invest in our people and our systems and our processes so that we can deliver services even better going forward.
We’ll be particularly focused on developing a framework for New Zealand Red Cross Te Ao Māori, we'll be embedding our new Area model and this will be a central theme at our national council meeting in November. We'll also be reflecting on lessons identified from the weather events earlier this year to make sure that we can continue to enhance and adjust our arrangements so that we can support communities in the next emergency, and of course the one after that and the one after that. We’ll also be continuing to improve our organisational processes including transforming our IT, improving all of our services so that we can continue to deliver what's needed and where it's needed the most. So thank you again for your dedication to New Zealand Red Cross and the work that we do each and every day wherever it's needed. Kia ora. Arohanui.
Achievements and plans
In our first year of Realising 2030, together we’ve made real strides towards our goals.
New Area Model
Our new Area Model is now up and running.
New Area Support Teams began their work in February 2023. We transitioned from 16 to seven Areas on 1 July 2023 and amended our Constitution to support this move. Further work is underway on the roles and responsibilities to ensure that all of us have a good understanding of how we can best work together to achieve our mission.
New operating model
Our new operating model is now in place.
We have recruited some great, enthusiastic Red Cross people.
We’re making our organisation a more attractive place to work, creating a better experience and more generous rewards for all our Red Cross people.
Our Te Ao Māori programme
We launched our Te Ao Māori programme a year earlier than planned, responding to feedback that this work was urgent for our organisation.
Our Aronui training programme is underway - helping develop our people’s capability in Te Ao Māori, Te Reo Māori and Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
We’re also developing a framework on Te Ao Māori in New Zealand Red Cross to guide us into the future.
Stronger foundations
We have established better budget systems and a clearer pathway towards achieving financial sustainability.
We’re working to transform our IT systems and our services, project management, business planning and reporting practices so we are ‘future fit’ and resilient.
We’re improving our practices in diversity and inclusion, child protection, health, safety wellbeing and learning and development.
We’ve also continued to build our work on International Humanitarian Law and policy.
Our core mission
We continued to deliver essential core work supporting out mission. All our people have worked hard to achieve these outcomes — our enthusiasm and passion is what drives us and what will sustain us through to realising Strategy 2030.
Key achievements in 2022/23:
- Our response to the North Island severe weather events earlier this year including the Auckland Anniversary weekend flood and Cyclone Gabrielle, with $27 million raised for the New Zealand Red Cross New Zealand Disaster Fund through the generosity of kiwis to support affected people.
- Completing 19 international deployments, mainly in support of our Pacific neighbours.
- Running special appeals to support the humanitarian effort in response to the Ukraine conflict, Pakistan flooding, Turkey and Syria earthquakes and the recent devastating earthquake in Morocco and flooding in Libya.
- Responding to 15 emergencies in Aotearoa New Zealand with 11,651 hours logged by our Disaster Welfare and Support Team members.
- Delivering 710,000 Meals on Wheels across 45 locations nationally.
- Increasing revenue from our retail shops and opening two new shops to support New Zealand Red Cross activities.
- Launching our new Pathways to Employment Ukraine programme.