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It’s great to see our local football and netball clubs using their prominent role in the community to model and encourage good citizenship. As you will have seen in this month’s bright cover photo, Gisborne Football Netball Club held its second annual Pride Round in July, adding socks and a specially designed jumper to their show of support for the LGBTIQA+ community this year. Gisborne Giants Football Netball Club in turn put much effort into supporting the TAC Road Safety Campaign. See their report on page 5.

Two Gisborne Primary students who helped lay out this edition proudly told me that their club, the Gisborne Rookies, was also participating in the Pride Round and provided the report on page 35.

Mental health continues to be an issue in the community, and I was impressed and moved by the Gisborne Secondary College art show on the topic on 22 July, which was instigated by the students themselves. We share some of the artworks on page 23. It is heartening to see the Community Bank award its largest ever grant for the development of a new youth mental wellbeing support service.

An upside to our growing community is the increasing number of services you can find locally. The scanning equipment at the new Matrix Medical Imaging in Goode Street will likely save many people time, stress and money.

Lastly, I thank Katrina Buttigieg for being on the Gazette committee for the last three and a half years and contributing to the Gazette in many ways.

Katrina initially helped with the advertising side then moved to running our social media. She has written columns for the Gazette and will continue as a distribution volunteer, for which we are very grateful. Happy reading,