Welcome to your community portal, we hope to have in here as much information about Central Hawkes Bay for the Central Hawkes Bay community as we can gather together.  This is planned to be a place to celebrate all that is positive and good about CHB, a family-friendly site.  We are now on countdown to our public launch 8 July 2014 and are planning competitions and prizes to celebrate the occasion.  (If you are a business and want to contribute towards the competitions/prizes get in touch now.)

Competitions
1/ There is a drawing competition open from now until 3pm Friday 18 July when a winner/winners will be decided.  The competition is open to any age, any number of entries, in any medium that can be shown on the window.  We are looking for a depiction of your favourite thing about living in CHB .  It must have CHB.NET.NZ in large letters on it.  Your full name, age and phone number on the back and a description of your picture.  These entries can be posted to P O Box 458 Waipukurau 4242 or handed in to Food for Thought in Waipukurau.

2/ There will be spot prizes awarded during the week of 8 July to 15 July for someone caught wearing blue in the main street of Waipukurau or Waipawa .  Blue is the brand colour of our website and a good colour to signify CHB look at our beautiful blue sky most of the time.  The more blue you are wearing the more likely you are to be caught???

Thank you to Gifford Devine, Vet Services, Waipawa Post Services and Grapevine Books for sponsoring prizes for these competitions.

Businesses and not for profit organisations
If you are a business in Central Hawkes Bay and have not yet placed your free listing or decided on a webpage or link to your website get in touch now.  Businesses can post free situations vacant, even work available for a few hours, days, weeks…

CHB residents
If you are a member of the community apply for free membership (click on the ‘here’ in the black box on the left hand side) now to allow you to enjoy the site to the fullest eg:

• post on the blogs and facebook
• take part in surveys and polls and forum discussions
• classifieds including a situations vacant or freebies section.
• Favourite recipes can be shared,
• budget ideas,
• gardening section,
• news feeds ,
• let us know about good things happening in the area
• shout out to those who deserve a bit of recognition for helping for making CHB a good place to live.

We are open to suggestions for uses for the site we want it to be useful.  Local weather is available.  Coming shortly regular input from your local community Constable , articles from the not for profit organisations in the area, 'a day in the life of .... and much more.

Submissions are requested for our sections:

• ‘a day in the life of …’ (eg a CHB housewife, CHB fireman etc…)
• If you are President of a not for profit organisation and want to be showcased get in touch we want to give you a voice tell us what you do, how you are funded, what assistance you need etc.

by email to [email protected].

Background
Originally Trevor Ulyatt of the Fine Print Company and Beverley Fox of CHB Mail set up the original www.chb.net.nz website (later Hawkesbaynz.net).  Beverley left the project, Trevor wanted revitalise it but was pushed for time to put into it alone.  He mentioned it to me and it fitted in well with my schedule and direction.  We wanted the CHB community to have one site where the public could go to find information on CHB, non-profit groups and and a comprehensive listing of businesses.  There are quite a few different CHB sites - we are not in competition with them. On the contrary, we want to bring them all together under the banner of CHB.NET.NZ and celebrate all the good things about CHB.

Trevor and I have put a lot of work into this project to get it where it is now but because of other heavy work commitments Trevor will be taking a step back from the project. He will, however, continue to contribute in the IT area. I will continue on as site administrator and thank Trevor for his hard work and dedication to the task. We hope that the site will continue to shine with his original vision of integrating businesses of Central Hawkes Bay and the community with a particular emphasis on providing an online presence for non-profit organisations together with content of general interest to our neighbours.

Where to from here
The public launch date is looming, there is much work to be done.  Please spread the word among businesses and not for profit organisations that have not yet been contacted or are not showing to get them on board with a free listing.

The site is still a work in progress with more plans afoot however suggestions are welcome.

CHB . NET .NZ - register on the site and bookmark it now.  Contact [email protected] or by phone 06 858 8965 or 027 239 9706 for further information or to sponsor, advertise or get your business listed, linked or webpaged.