We’ve been getting neighbourly

When we first met with the good people at Neighbourhood Houses Tasmania (NHT), it was amazing to hear about all the good they were doing in the community. Across Tassie they support a total of 35 neighbourhood houses. If you haven’t heard of them, the houses are local places where people get together to do heaps community based activities, like healthy eating programs, for example. Importantly, they can see what they are doing is making big differences in people’s lives. You can find out what they’re about here.

At Aurora, it really tapped into what we wanted too: to be a part of that grassroots level action and to make a difference where it’s needed. So we put our heads together and came up with a plan: one that they said would have an immediate impact, and one that we believed captured our goal for involvement in the community … to see Tasmanians empowered for the future.

So, in March last year we funded a new solar system at NHT headquarters in Hobart. The system produces a total of 3,242 KWhs of electricity. (A house can usually do 5KWhs with 16 panels, so you can imagine this size of this 8.2KW solar installation.) The project had two main goals: to cut costs and improve energy efficiency. It’s still early days but at this stage the system has already made a big difference to the bottom line, which in turn makes a big difference to what the team can do in the community. 

But to be honest, that was only a taste for us. We loved working with NHT so much that we can’t stop! We signed up to fund their annual conferences up until 2020, so that everyone across the state can get together and talk about the amazing things everyone is doing. Collaboration is the key: both for the different parts of NHT and for us. What’s next? Stay tuned … 

It's been 12 months! see how much Neighbourhood Housing Tasmania has saved on their power bills here!