A small East Coast community has shown big love to a local early childcare centre after a “senseless” act of vandalism left it “smashed and trashed”.
The manager of Te Puna Reo o Raparapaririki hopes to find solutions when the culprits are found, to foster “connection and inclusivity” that can create positive outcomes.
Te Puna Reo o Raparapaririki manager Cali Morice said she believed the break-in happened about midnight on Monday.
“When one of our staff members arrived on Tuesday morning, she found our premises just smashed and trashed,” Morice said.
She said there was damage to the play equipment and outdoor area, loose parts barrels were smashed and strewn everywhere, Perspex panels were smashed, garden beds overturned and graffiti was left throughout the kura property and on vehicles.
Morice said the community had faced “a range of emotions” because of the incident.
“Anger is the first, natural emotion when you are confronted by something like that at a place, a service, a centre that contributes so much to our community,” she said.
“To see it ravished like that was a real shock to everybody. It is just senseless.”
The community quickly pulled together to show their support by showing up to the kura to help clean up, remove the rubbish and sharp broken Perspex, and to offer cash, rebuild and repair work.
“We are really blown away by the offers in the community, these are cash offers and offers of labour. That has been a real positive,” Morice said.
“We had two or three people go through and just do a drive-by check of the school last night, so we have a little community watch group going on here.”
She understood police were investigating leads on the identity of the culprits.
She wanted to find solutions to prevent further incidents when they were found.
“It is just helping them through that process as well and getting some connection and inclusivity going, what we can do as a community to keep them active and keep them connected and looking forward to something more positive.”
The kura restarts classes mid-January, so it wasworking to get everything ready by then.
She wasn’t sure of the cost of repairs and replacements yet, but estimated them to be about $10,000.
“This is something that we didn’t have planned, but we will go through the insurance process and put in a claim for that.”
Morice said the centre building was 15 years old and this was the first incident of vandalism it had experienced in that time.
A police spokesman said they responded to reports of vandalism and burglary at an early childcare centre in Tuparoa Rd, Ruatōria, about 12.30pm on Tuesday, but the incident was believed to have happened overnight.
The spokesman said the incident was “currently being assessed for potential lines of inquiry”.
