Moving to, Living and Working in New Zealand:
Seminars by move2nz
During July 2007 move2nz ran a series of highly successful Seminars across the United Kingdom for people in the process of moving to New Zealand. Aimed at prospective migrants part or most of the way through their immigration process, these Seminars were designed to give a real-life and unbiased view of life in New Zealand to improve migrant's chances of successfully settling permanently in Aotearoa.
Built around good solid details of real 'Kiwi' life, migration issues, potential pitfalls and methods to maximise successful settlement from the perspective of settled migrants these workshops were designed to provide a wide range of useful information and a platform to ask important questions. Detailed material was also provided by industry experts on subjects requested.
Immigration New ZealandA strong desire in presenting these Seminars was to assist and support Immigration New Zealand in their work in attracting high quality skilled migrants to Aotearoa and the Department of Labour in ensuring those migrants settle successfully and permanently in this country.
It was a great opportunity to meet with Ian Riddle (Marketing Director) and Andrew Lockhart (Regional Manager for Europe, the Americas and Africa) before the Seminars to tell them about move2nz and the work we do. Ian Riddle from the INZ London office also presented at all three of the London Seminars which were located in the penthouse suite of New Zealand House, providing a truly expert insight into Immigration rules and requirements.
Building Realistic Expectations
After hearing many members of move2nz express feelings of disappointment on arrival in New Zealand we realised that migrants were receiving the wrong message from advertising aimed mainly at tourists. Additional details were required by prospective migrants and we found through our work with recent migrants that those who had gained a proper insight into 'Kiwi' life were generally delighted with what they found here.
Existing events were described by many members as providing little actual information and were seen mainly as vehicles for businesses to sell services. Meetups that move2nz had arranged around these events were found to be the high point of each seminar. Counting the Costs
Sponsors kindly stepped forward to assist with the costs of running these events with P.S.S. being the first to believe in what we were doing. Working In, Move Over and the Canterbury Development Corporation (CDC) also assisted get this show on the road, but the majority of the $60,000 required to undertake these seminars was mostly covered by Mike and Tammy from their own pocket including all of the prizes handed out.
Seminar Content
We collected details of what our audience was most interested in while they reserved their seats. With 77% being interested in Real Estate we invited representatives from Bayleys Real Estate to speak. We ourselves covered Employment (72%), Health (64%) and Schooling (55%) as well as migrant issues. The other main area of interest was shipping with 49% of people attending stating they wanted to know more. Our main sponsor P.S.S. stepped in to cover this issue.
We also wanted to cover Immigration issues and were kindly supported in this respect by Immigration New Zealand. As we ourselves are not qualified to give out information on this subject we restricted this to the London Seminars as, with the short notice, INZ were unable to secure a budget to present at our other events. Seminar format followed two 1ΒΌ hour sessions of speakers presenting with a break between. The second session was followed by a question and answer period and the presentation of free 'Kiwi' prize packs. Prizes were also given for personalised name badges which were encouraged during the following mingle session to allow everyone to talk freely. This method of presenting information, providing a public Q/A session and then allowing attendees to ask more personal and specific questions worked out very well enabling people to gather information and formulate questions that could be answered on the day.
Prize Draws
At each Seminar we ran a free prize draw for a lucky audience member. These prize packs were very happily received as were the t-shirts kindly donated by Wellington City Council which we handed out to people interested in moving to Wellington.
Meetups
Part of what move2nz does is to bring people together through meetups and gatherings. These are designed to assist migrants in building a friendship network that they can use during the migration process and while settling in to New Zealand life.
While travelling around United Kingdom we took the time to organise two meetups for anyone interested in coming along. In London we had a glorious day at Greenwich Park. Making the most of the weather we organised a picnic and ended up running a great game of touch Rugby. The second meetup in Manchester was less fortunate with the weather; however we made good use of the wet-weather location: The Trafford Centre in central Manchester.
This had a huge seating area which we took over with approximately 60 members coming along to say hello. With a great mixture of young and old we had a great time and made some good friends. |
