Chair's Report to 2023 Annual General Meeting

I have the privilege of delivering my third report as Chair of the Bay of Plenty Education Trust.

As always, first and foremost, I would like to thank the Trustees for their ongoing contributions to the Trust over the course of the last year. Each one of you should be proud in the knowledge that you have played a small part in improving the lives of our young recipients.

I would also like to make special thanks to our publicity consultant, Monique Balvert-O’Connor, for her ever-fascinating press releases and newsletter articles. Further thanks go to Tom’s colleagues Jennifer Rowlands and Laurel Spence at Ingham Mora for their valuable contributions to the Trust
over the last year, and to the team at Ingham Mora for allowing us to use their boardroom and facilities.

I would like to highlight some of positive milestones the Trust has accomplished this year. These include:

1. Maintaining our existing education grant initiatives, being our scholarships, support to Instep and Toi EDA and operating our bespoke Future Leaders Program;

2. Successfully rolling out the second year of our supplementary grants scholarship with close to $30,000 of supplementary grants being shared between the Graeme
Dingle Foundation to assist two Year 10 students in their endeavours to complete their Project K programmes and the Youth Encounter Programme to support three young people;

3. Undertaking further work to improve our protocols for the application of surplus grant money for worthy causes which meet the purposes of the Trust. Our advertising campaign resulted in four applicants in for the 2023 supplementary grants, along with other enquiries and general publicity following our Sunlive press release in January 2023;

4. Undertaking ongoing refinements to our investment portfolio and Statement of Investment Policies and Objectives (SIPO);

5. Welcoming David Glover and Renay Jones onto the Trust (Renay effective 17 May 2023);

6. Maintaining our publicity and promotional program through annual press releases, Enewsletters, social media and our website.

The year saw the retirement of Peter Tootill as a Trustee on 15 November 2022, following just under 9 years of service as a Trustee for the Trust. Peter was appointed as a Trustee on 21 November 2013. On behalf of the Board, I sincerely thank Peter for his tremendous service to the Trust, and in particular his representation of the Eastern Bay of Plenty. I wish him all the best with his next challenge.

Looking forward to the year ahead, I challenge the Trust not to rest on its laurels but to strive for further improvements in its goal to advance education in young people across coastal Bay of Plenty.

Nick Earl – Chairman
Dated: 15th May 2023 and read at the AGM on 17 May 2023