A birthday party at Parliament

Living Sober had a birthday party! In the Grand Hall at Parliament! The event was to celebrate our significant 10-year milestone and to demonstrate to funders and decision makers the great job we are doing supporting people who are struggling with alcohol. The amazing team at the NZ Drug Foundation, who have tirelessly backed this site and kept it afloat, organised all details of the party; sending out invitations, inviting speakers, booking catering, liaising with Parliamentary security, ordering the cake (!), buying the tree (!!), all of it. So I really want to say a big ginormous thank you to them for their efforts. Below are some photos of the event so you can see what it looked like. Enjoy! Mrs D xx

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First some photos of people arriving and mingling. This is me (Mrs D) on the right with Leah, who for many years was Living Sober's Project Lead at the Drug Foundation.

More arrivals and chit-chat...

Some obligotory posed shots, this is me with (L-R)  Green Party Co-Leader Chlöe Swarbrick who is chair of the Cross Party Group on Mental Health and Addiction, Laura Trask who is Act's Mental Health spokesperson, National's Matt Doocey who is the Minister of Mental Health, and Ingrid Leary who is Labour's Mental Health spokesperson.

On the left is Ben Birks Ang who is Deputy Executive Director of the NZ Drug Foundation, then National's Carlos Cheung who is a member of the Health Select Committee, me, and Sarah Helm who is the Drug Foundation's Executive Director.

There were nibbles...

Then it was time for formalities. The event was opened with a karakia.

Then MC Corin Dann from RNZ (also known as Mr D!) spoke and introduced all the speakers. 

Up first - me! I talked about how much I love running this site, particularly the creative aspect of producing all the content and the huge uplift I get witnessing people dig deep and do incredible work to turn their lives around.

Then Minister Doocey spoke, praising the impact our site is having and the power of peer support.

Then it was time for a panel discussion, led by Chlöe Swarbrick who started by emphasising some of the changes that have occured recently to our alcohol regulations. On the panel were (L-R) Matt Calman, Ninakaye Taane-Tinorau, and Guyon Espiner - all sober heroes who have shared their stories and contributed content to this site. They each spoke passionately and powerfully about their personal stories, the boozy environment we live in and what they'd like to see changed. 

At the end of the formalities I was given a beautiful pohutukawa tree - by the lovely Spencer who does member support here at Living Sober. 

Also had a hug from the lovely Tania from Cogo who carried out an evaluation of Living Sober a few years back (which has hugely helped us prove our worth).

Then - cake!

The formalities were closed by the Drug Foundation's Ben Birks Ang who read out some of our site's evaluation stats (that prove how effective and powerful our community is), then said a karakia.

We did more chatting and nibbling and drinking non-alcoholic drinks and soon it was all over. Two days later and I am still buzzing and so grateful to everyone who came and helped shine a spotlight on our incredible site, powerful community and the difference we are making to so many people's lives.

Mrs D xxx