From the Editor: Keeping our community assets

Welcome back! I hope you all had an excellent festive break, finding some time to recover from 2025.

For me, the few weeks off went by far too quickly, but we’re back and here to bring your stories to life.

One of the cool features we run in (almost) every edition is the My Local Community Hall.

This has been a fantastic way to showcase some of the wonderful community facilities we have here across Franklin and North Waikato. Many of these halls are often overlooked, so I hope you have been enjoying learning a little more about them.

My own local hall isn’t new or fancy, but it’s a solid asset for my semi-rural area when so many other buildings have faded away.

A huge thank you to all those volunteers on our hall committees and those in the community who care for these assets.

Many of these halls were created through the hard work of our communities, so now is the time for us to rally around them and keep these facilities alive. As I spoke to different hall committees, I often heard about the same issue – a lack of volunteers. So, if you haven’t been inside your local hall yet, perhaps that needs to change.

Each year, community-run halls have an annual general meeting (AGM), so make sure you keep an eye out for the AGM this year.

Let’s keep these important community assets for future generations.