Australian Govlink Vol 1 2014 | Page 81

NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH were. I walked to school, was part of the local youth club and played sport. All of these activities lead to natural interaction within my local community. It’s that natural interaction, that local network and knowledge that is an essential component to making Neighbourhood Watch a success. So let’s fast track 40 years, what have we got today? I don’t have a local store I frequent anymore. I’ve done a lot of driving of my kids to and from school and sports events. I drive to the gym to exercise! Whilst I pride myself on knowing almost everyone in my street by sight and many by name, I very rarely walk the local streets. We are a society reliant on the car. We drive everywhere. Departing and returning from our internal garages, we live in gated communities, we don’t have to see, speak or wave to anyone in our street if we don’t want to. To keep in touch with friends I send a text or use Facebook, Instagram or Messenger or even the good old email, I don’t Twitter. I’m a typical statistic, a 40-something female, online communicator. It’s fun, quick and easy. No one can ignore the enormous effect advancing technology has had and will continue to have on the makeup of our family and community communication structure. Where can you go these days to escape the mobile phone? Our obsession with being on our phones is all consuming. I don’t read the paper anymore, I read the news online. I love Google, how did I live without it? (My husband feels he has now become redundant – no more questions to ponder). I have instant access to anything I want to know. Mobile phones are banned from meal times in my home, so we can actually converse with one another. I notice that my teenagers never really plan anything in detail in advance, no need, it’s all instant communication. I am the same, guilty as charged! Neighbourhood Watch has developed online, it has had to, to stay relevant. We have had to advance our crime prevention messaging delivery and knowledge to stay current. Being safe in your own home is not all we have to think about. I can get burgled online! If you are on-line, then you could also be a sitting target to new types of crime. Identity theft, relationship scams, lotteries scams, business scams – in fact there are hundreds of scams we probably don’t even know about yet. We are constantly developing and updating our website information to share quality examples and knowledge through both traditional communication methods and online methods. You can join a Neighbourhood Watch group online. Whether engaging with your geographical community or your community of interest – it’s fast and efficient – but it begs the question, is it enough? It seems life is so much more fast-paced with a drive for instant gratification. We need instant access to almost everything because we are so time poor. So we develop a greater reliance on the technology that can give us what we require. But are we forgetting the most important thing here, it’s not about the technology, it’s about people, people, people. There are some sobering lessons to be learned from our consuming dependency on technology. None closer to home for me than the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. All forms of technological communication failed. In survival mode, people turned to people for help. It was the traditional Neighbourhood Watch (Neighbourhood Support in New Zealand) phone tree system that came to the fore, neighbours knew neighbours and they knew who to check on. Neighbourhood Watch is about creating communities that are safe and vibrant. Are we relevant? Absolutely. Neighbourhood Wa э