CNSST (formerly the Chinese New Settlers Services Trust) had a full day of celebrations on Friday 6 September to acknowledge the Festival of Adult Learning Ahurei Ākonga. Three core elements formed the focus of the day including celebrating lifelong learning, acknowledging age friendly Auckland and promoting their elder abuse hotline.

CNSST was established in 1998 and recently celebrated its 26th anniversary. The Trust provides culturally and linguistically appropriate social services, education, social housing and international exchange programmes, annually empowering migrant community members from over 20 ethnic groups.

CNSST Education Institutes (MoE 7158) is committed to providing equitable tertiary learning opportunities to ethnic learners and courses include English literacy and numeracy, cultural competency, workforce and employment skills, and vocational training.

As part of the festival, CNSST offered two rounds of “taster” events to participants. Each event lasted 45 minutes and gave attendees the chance to get a flavour of what is on offer from the Trust throughout the year.

“We held four session topics including an introduction to our Chines Cultural Competency programme, MYOB accounting, workplace literacy and numeracy and an introduction to food safety course. The Chinese Cultural Competency workshop was designed to help people better understand how to engage with, and develop effective communications with, Chinese communities in Auckland,” said Gloria Yaping Gao, Chief Operations Manager.

“The Workplace Literacy and numeracy course is designed for new immigrants at work with limited English. We hope that through attending one of the taster events, people might come back and enrol for the programme on a more sustained basis. This just gives them the opportunity to check out if the course is relevant for them.”

After the taster courses attendees were invited to join a combined painting activity under the theme of Moon Festival, and access information on other courses and services offered by CNSST. This included, among other things, age friendly and elder abuse prevention information as well as barista courses. Annually CNSST supports over 15,000 people in their community.