The mayor of Central Hawke's Bay (CHB), Peter Butler, presented the award as an acknowledgement of Shirley's 46 years of service to the local community.

Specifically, it recognised her work with vulnerable pregnant mothers and in the areas of counselling and social services.

Shirley also worked successfully to bring the Hawke's Bay Community College (now known as EIT) to rural areas such as CHB to enable tertiary study in the regions.

In the 1970's Shirley and her late husband, Ian, saw a need for support services for pregnant women who wanted to continue their pregnancies in order to either keep their babies or place them for adoption.

After prayer and careful discernment, they donated their family home and, with the assistance of community members, the Pleroma Charitable Trust was formed.

The Pleroma Trust is now known as Pleroma Social Services and continues to provide counselling and social services in the Central Hawke's Bay community.

It is part of the Pleroma Group which also includes Pleroma Press and Pleroma Christian Supplies which were also founded by Shirley and Ian.

Shirley is currently general manager of Pleroma Christian Supplies.

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• Supplied

In a prayer agenda, the Exclusive Brethren church told its 45,000 worldwide members it had received a "favourable settlement" in a dispute over schools' fees.

"Outcome - NZ IRD matter - a favourable settlement was arrived at for school fees and fee relief. The attitude of NZ IRD should be applauded."

IRD group tax counsel Graham Tubb was bemused by the prayer agenda. "It's great to hear that people are praying for us - I don't think it happens all that often."

The sect runs its own private Westmount Schools, which have received $14.5 million from the Ministry of Education in the past five years.

An investigation into the church has found dozens of trusts that are controlled by church members lawfully receive tax deductions on donations, without registering on the Charities Register.

A spokesman for the church said it wasn't obliged to register.

The New Zealand charitable trusts, which own 191 churches and halls around New Zealand, run the Brethren's Westmount schools, and even a Brethren travel agent, are understood to be controlled by members loyal to the worldwide leader, Sydney-based accountant Bruce Hales.

It's understood New Zealand Brethren members pay large amounts of donations direct to Hales, who flies by private jet, and is known as the Elect Vessel.

In 2015, Hales said a mentally unstable New Zealand Brethren member who was in contact with excommunicated members - known as "opposers" - should 'drink rat poison".

A church spokesman said the remarks made by Hales at a church meeting had been taken out of context and applied with a literal interpretation.

"He is using a common, everyday, metaphor used to describe the effect on a person coming into contact with another person whose beliefs and values are different from their own and potentially damaging."

Source

• stuff.co.nz
• Image: i.ytimg.com

Last week, members of Samoa Returnees Charitable Trust Fund, all deported former prisoners, returned from overseas, launched its community project at Vailele to help the Little Sisters of the Poor.

"The initiative is part and parcel to allowing our members an opportunity to give back to the community and in turn restore a good reputation and standing after they have been disgraced or neglected", says the Trust Fund's Executive Director Vernon Jamie McKenzine

The project is funded by NZAid which allowed the Trust to purchase of garden tools, paint, painting brushes, tool boxes, ladders, wheel barrows, trash bins, weed eaters and lawn mowers

Source

• Savali
• Image: Savali