THETA Farewells Gareth
THETA has farewelled Gareth. We wish him well and I take this opportunity to share something of Gareth’s work with THETA which goes back some years.
Gareth was an actor in 1997 in the tour of the programme PSST! He returned to THETA in 2004 as Assistant Director for Sexwise and was the Director for Sexwise 2005. In 2006 he became the Programme Administrator and held this position until the death of our THETA Administrator in 2009 when Gareth took on this role. He has been in this role since 2009. During this time Gareth has worked with a Health Promotion approach and networked with as many services and agencies across the country as he was able to find, not to speak of schools, Kura Kaupapa, Alt Eds and Teen Parent Units.
I have had the privilege of working with Gareth since I became a trustee for THETA in 2009. In 2011 I took on the role of Artistic Director and Programme Director and this is when we began working really closely together. Since then we have collaborated, conspired and co-operated to develop Sexwise and it’s capacity to reach our young people around the country. Gareth quickly realised we needed to build strong relationships with services to enable the best wrap round support we could for schools and young people. Gareth also became adept at sussing out where in the country needs appeared to be the greatest and set about creating systems that would help us with this.
Together we have presented at two Sexual Health Conferences and met with many of you who work with youth in the Sexual Health field . I have debated with Gareth, laughed with Gareth, driven many many miles with Gareth, flown up and down the country with Gareth, spent hundreds of hours on the phone and Skype with Gareth, and shared in the exciting germination of innovative ideas Gareth has had. Hopefully we will be able to continue to bring these to fruition.
I would like to publicly thank Gareth for his dedication to the work of THETA and his conscientious attention to the detail, many clever ideas that contributed to the success of Sexwise one way or another. I will miss Gareth immensely and feel privileged to have had these past 6 years working alongside him.
Evelyn Mann
Artistic Director, THETA
I wanted to also acknowledge the huge impact that Gareth has had on the success of the Sexwise programme. The programme is now integrated into the amazing fabric of the community sexual health promotion calendar up and down Aotearoa. Sexwise cannot stand alone- it must be part of a planned community effort and Gareth has facilitated this role admirably. Also huge recognition to all the local health promoters, educators and community champions who take up the opportunity to support the delivery of Sexwise . Gareth leaves us a strong public health champion- a role he probably didnt realise he had. We look forward to meeting the new Administrator and hearing how they will continue with this kaupapa.Thank you Gareth.