With the maze of roadworks, dust and crazy construction going on around Wynyard Quarter at the moment its easy to forget all of the wonderful work that goes on within this rad little community of people and businesses, and how grateful we are to be a part of a neighbourhood and wider network that harbours so many talented and innovative humans.
So here is a shout out to some of our extended GridAKL and Wynyard Quarter family, who are pushing the boundaries and making us proud to know them on the daily.
You couldn’t meet a more community orientated, involved, connected and enthusiastic team than these guys. Residents of GridAKL, the Weirdly team build customised recruitment software that filters job applicants based on how well they will gel with your team culture. Their approach brings personality and individual strengths and talents to the forefront, and is a refreshing and welcome addition to the process of sifting through black and white CV’s to determine a persons suitability and value. Turns out we aren’t just being biased either. Weirdly have been nominated as finalists in the Innovation in Information Communications Technology and Cloud Solutions category of the New Zealand Innovators Awards 2015. GO WEIRDLY!
Another organisation that we are proud to have call GridAKL home, Ākina embody the very best attributes from both the business and the social development sectors. Their mission? To provide supportfor people and organisations who have ideas to drive positive social or environmental change through social enterprise. They do this through the activation of talent, assistance in delivery, and facilitating new market and investment opportunities for social enterprise. It is a worthy, necessary and admirable mission statement, and one that they fulfil extremely successfully. This has been recognised in their nomination for The EcoPro Cleaning Co Community Innovation Award category of the Sustainable Business Network Awards! Proud Grid.
Side-note: one of the many incredible social enterprises who Ākina have worked with, the Blueskin Resilient Communities Trust, is also a nominee in the Awards, for the Renewables Innovation Award. Says it all really.
If you spend a bit of time around Wynyard Quarter, you have likely seen this wonderful woman hooning around on her bike taking over the world. Viv is the Senior Advisor in Sustainability at Pānuku Development Auckland, and an absolute inspiration in her constant efforts to push sustainable development and future thinking to the forefront of how we make plans pertaining to the growth of our city. She is unsurprisingly, one of this years nominees in the Element Magazine Sustainability Champion Award category of the Sustainable Business Network Awards. Its great to have great neighbours.
If you ever work out of GridAKL you may notice there are often a couple of friendly accountants sitting up at the communal table in the social zone. If you haven’t said hello before, you should. These guys are here to help and answer any finance related questions, and we feel really stoked to be involved in such a rad partnership. GridAKL residents and hot-deskers are not the only ones they help. Deloittes are up for the Community Impact category of the Sustainable Business Network Awards, a result of their amazing collaborative approach to problem solving relief aid with Oxfam NZ.
They used expertise and insight developed in the private sector to developed a logistics framework and management plans for disaster support and relief in the Pacific region. That framework will now help Oxfam NZ with their wonderful work reaching affected communities with vital lifesaving supplies, faster. Oh the feels.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of achievements, but it is does give a really beautiful idea of what can be built when people work together and share their skills and passions for the purpose of positive innovation. If these are kinds of things happening now, just imagine how much our wider community of humans can achieve once the dust settles.
