On the 24th of January 2020, they celebrated their golden wedding anniversary.

At the time they wrote:

"God's call on us as a married couple was to open our hearts and home to vulnerable children, young people and their families."

"This ministry has been central to our lives over the last 50 years and has been expressed through our home and especially through the founding and leading of Open Home Foundation New Zealand and Open Home Foundation International."

"We thank God for His love that has bound us together in love with Him over these years."

Since it began in 1977, the Open Home Foundation has carved out a particular niche in the care and protection of vulnerable children.

Almost 30 years ago an international branch of its work began, which is still headed by Ewen.

These days its aim overseas is to empower communities to care for their impoverished and vulnerable children, especially girls, as they are the most likely to be abused.

This is done by offering training in the care and protection of those children, alongside financial support, to set up sustainable micro-enterprise projects that fund the children's education and health care.

When they were in their twenties Ewen and Gillian enrolled to study at Victoria University where they eventually met in the Maori language lab.

Romance followed and the couple pondered how their wedding could reflect their different Christian denominations.

Gillian was Presbyterian while Ewen was Catholic. They described it as sharing the same faith but with different expressions of worship.

"We wanted to honour our parents and honour God in our marriage but it would have been easier to elope," they said.

Catholic Cardinal, Peter McKeefry, gave special permission for the couple to be married in the ecumenical chapel at Wallis House in Lower Hutt with a Catholic priest, Fr (later Bishop) Peter Cullinane, and Presbyterian Minister, Dr Ian Fraser, jointly officiating.

At the time the ceremony, held on January 4, 1970, was considered ground-breaking and was mentioned in a daily newspaper.

Source

• ohfint.org
• dailyencourager.co.nz
• Image: ohfint.org

With an inquiry into historic abuse of children in state care around the corner, things are also likely to get a lot darker before the year's out. Continue reading

The new hospital for the Wellington region is expected to be around 7,000 square metres, three floors, and include 50 inpatient hospital beds. Continue reading

What may be more of an eye opener is that a local gang is doing the same thing.

The Tribal Huks is a gang from from Ngaruawahia.

Dubbed the 'sandwich gang', their president Jamie Pink says they fill a social need that wasn't being catered for adequately.

They have been feeding hungry kids in 31 Waikato schools for four years.

Now a gang wants to provide nourishment for kids in need across the country.

"Over 400 we reach a day; not enough ... There are so many hungry kids in the country, on a huge scale, and it isn't getting any better," said Pink.

Last week Pink and the gang started Kai 4 the future foundation and have kick-started it with a sum of $20,000.

The foundation is set up to collect money to purchase food for hungry children across the country.

The $20,000 foundation kickstart from the gang came from a membership tithing of a "few hundred."

Pink guarantees the money was made and given legitimately.

"We put the hat around, we've been saving for a little bit for this."

"When you have that many members you can get that money together."

Pink says there is about 300 members and associates of the huks.

He says knows the stigma that comes with being in a gang but wants the foundation to work.

For transparency and legitimacy he has brought on board "good people" to be signatories for the foundation's accounts.

"Some are community leaders, some run community houses; all these people are good people."

"The money isn't going through the gang and we can show that."

Ngaruawahia Community House manager Anne Ramsay is one of those that has been elected as a signatory.

Ramsay says that although she has apprehensions about Pink's gang ties- his heart and his commitment to the children are true.

"I really support the work that they do," Ramsay said.

"I probably have a few concerns around the perception of his gang involvement and hopefully that won't cloud people's thinking about it."

The plan is to set up a proper trust and continue to provide sandwiches in schools, as he has been doing already, and extend that to more schools."

The gang have been offered a lot of money since the Waikato Times broke the story of their good deeds in October 2014, but they have refused it.

"A lot of people have tried to give money online and personally too, but we've said no. We've taken food though and we always said we'd take food and give it to the kids."

"But here's a way they can give money and know that it's going to be watched over by the good people to feed the kids."

Source

• stuff.co.nz
• stuff.co.nz
• Image: stuff.co.nz

Last year 49 children under 14 were left unattended by their parents at the casino's central city site, including in its vast underground car park. The figure for 2011 was 42.

The numbers are revealed in the company's Host Responsibility report to the Gambling Commission, outlining operations at the casino for the 12 months to December 31. Continue reading

Her perspective has a lot of intuitive appeal in an era where millions of women have children outside of marriage, serve as breadwinner moms to their families, or are raising children on their own. Dads certainly seem dispensable in today's world.

What this view overlooks, however, is a growing body of research suggesting that men bring much more to the parenting enterprise than money, especially today, when many fathers are highly involved in the warp and woof of childrearing. As Yale psychiatrist Kyle Pruett put it in Salon: "fathers don't mother."

Pruett's argument is that fathers often engage their children in ways that differ from the ways in which mothers engage their children. Yes, there are exceptions, and, yes, parents also engage their children in ways that are not specifically gendered. But there are at least four ways, spelled out in my new book, Gender and Parenthood: Biological and Social Scientific Perspectives (co-edited with Kathleen Kovner Kline), that today's dads tend to make distinctive contributions to their children's lives:

The Power of Play "In infants and toddlers, fathers' hallmark style of interaction is physical play that is characterized by arousal, excitement, and unpredictability," writes psychologist Ross Parke, who has conducted dozens of studies on fatherhood, including a study of 390 families that asked mothers and fathers to describe in detail how they played with their children. By contrast, mothers are "more modulated and less arousing" in their approach to play. Continue reading

Sources

• The Atlantic
• Image: We Made