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New NZQA Micro-Credentials
We shine the light on the best New Zealand has to offer in terms of fresh ingredients, transformed into outstanding cuisine, exceptional wines and beverages, our spectacular scenery captured by so many memorable tourism experiences, yet as nation, we still struggle to understand and tell this story.
With NZQA approval for 13 micro-credentials, the New Zealand School Food and Wine hopes to inspire and attract new people to jobs in hospitality, wine and tourism and also enhance wider community understanding of our food and beverage story.
We export food and wine to the world, yet pride in this achievement is often lacking by our own communities.
There is a crisis right now because job-seekers, including school leavers, are being pushed into other industries especially the building trades. There is a perfect storm of government incentives paid to employers, along with negative counsel from career advisors and families warning young people off seeking careers in hospitality and tourism. This is resulting in a critical lack of workers.
In developing this suite of short, part-time micro-credentials that range from classic cooking to food and beverage history to food costing and digital marketing, we are seeking to inspire people to dip their toes into our sector, even if they are currently working or studying elsewhere.
In addition, these micro-credentials enable people already employed to develop new skills and craft new talents but to also signal that this career pathways is valid, diverse and on-going. Just look at our food heros, like Peter Gordon and Annabel Langbein, now in their 60s, with a tremendous backstory.
From the various lockdowns, we know that people find joy in cooking and that people are curious to develop new talents in the kitchen; that wine and cocktails are cool and fun; that an important part of any tourism destination is the food and beverage offering whether as a winery cellar door experience or paddock to plate cuisine.
Online Options
Online study options are embedded in many of the short programmes, enabling people from around the country to study about New Zealand wine or learn how to write an electronic newsletter or find out more about our food history.
The micro-credentials are equally suitable for the consumer; the food and wine lover who just wants to learn more. In building broader community understanding and respect for the food and beverage culture of Aotearoa-New Zealand, inevitably we will see more people attracted to work in our sector. That is the shared goal of these new programmes.
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Poll: Should drivers retake the theory test every 10 years?
Drivers get where they need to go, but sometimes it seems that we are all abiding by different road rules (for example, the varying ways drivers indicate around a roundabout).
Do you think drivers should be required to take a quick driving theory test every 10 years?
Vote in the poll and share any road rules that you've seen bent! 😱
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49.5% Yes
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48.6% No
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1.9% Other - I'll share below
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Here's Thursday's thinker!
I am lighter than air, but a hundred people cannot lift me. What am I?
Do you think you know the answer to our daily riddle? Don't spoil it for your neighbours! Simply 'Like' this post and we'll post the answer in the comments below at 2pm.
Want to stop seeing riddles in your newsfeed?
Head here and hover on the Following button on the top right of the page (and it will show Unfollow) and then click it. If it is giving you the option to Follow, then you've successfully unfollowed the Riddles page.
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Why make picking up reserved library books harder? What do you think? Challenge: Write the last stanza for the first poem attached below.
Once books are reserved in Auckland Libraries books, when they are available no longer go alphabetically by customer but instead go into a Holds pickup shelf number based presumably somehow on when each book needs to be picked up by.
I had two books reserved that arrived on two different days in the Blockhouse Bay Library and hence each book has a different shelf number. Hard to find unless you knew the shelf number in the notification email. Even if you knew the shelf number I found myself three books by the same author on the two shelf numbers.
More recently yesterday a book I reserved was on a different shelf number than was specified in my notification email (see image below).
Sadly it is clear from library staff that a numerical system for reserves is here to stay.
I suggest that so that all books for each person has the same shelf number, the shelf number becomes the last digit of a person's library card (0-9).
Within each shelf number a book is found under the day the reserve arrives in the library (01 to 31, hopefully the same date the email is sent).
Since a customer appears to have 10 days to pick up a book, ten days of the month would appear to be required at any time (for each digit 0-9).
Once there are 10 days used the next day's reserves could go back at the beginning of the shelf number after any remaining books not collected (hopefully none) are removed (along with the old day number and the new day number (01 to 31) inserted) after the last day available and future days' books remaining moved forward to make room.
Each day number (01-31) would appear once for each shelf number (0-9) before the first book on that day- perhaps cover an old withdrawn book with paper with each day number on the spine?
When a reserved book arrives in the library the last digit of the library card could be placed on a piece of paper in the book to be removed when it is put on the shelf, to be recycled the next day.
What do you think?
See the image below and page 3 below for a letter appearing in the Western Leader on 9 September:
www.neighbourly.co.nz...