Our social impact partnership with the Student Volunteer Army (SVA) enables us to build stronger, more resilient communities to help protect our customers and the things they care about. It provides a powerful opportunity to engage locally and support communities year-round as well as after a major event.
The annual SVA conference
In November, we proudly sponsored the annual SVA Clubs Conference in Napier. The three-day leadership training and development event brought together 30 SVA club executives from universities around Aotearoa. We provided some learnings on how we can help communities recover from major disaster events and how frontline response teams and volunteers can manage their own resilience during these times.
Aaron Redmond, our Head of Home Claims, went along to share his experience leading teams during major disaster events. Aaron said, “Seeing a passionate, dedicated and engaged group of students ready to support their communities was hugely inspiring. It was a pleasure to see our future leaders in action and give them some guidance on leading with confidence and responding to crisis”.
Taking action together
On the second day of the conference, the SVA club executives, SVA leadership team and AA Insurance employees headed out to Esk Valley to meet up with the Hawke’s Bay Clean Up Team and help restore a local strawberry grower’s flood-impacted property.
Property owner Donald Crosby had been living in Hawke’s Bay for 16 years and established his greenhouse strawberry farm in 2017. The farm was badly damaged in Cyclone Gabrielle in February 2023:
“My property had been inundated with over two metres of silt and debris. I was struck by the enormity of the damage as the destruction was just so massive. But I was also amazed at some of the things that survived – one of which was the structure of my greenhouses where I grew my strawberries. Although there was a big clean-up ahead, this gave me hope for the future and that it could be repaired,” stated Crosby.
The team helped clear sheds that had been filled with silt, sorted through his strawberry grow bags, and helped repair some of the damage to the cladding on his main shed. Donald has plans to rebuild the greenhouses and grow strawberries to harvest during winter 2025. With three greenhouses in operation, his crop could produce 25-30 tonnes of strawberries a year.
Working with the SVA
Established in 2010, the Student Volunteer Army (SVA) has mobilised tens of thousands of student volunteers in local communities. Since the inception in 2019 of the SVA Service Award - a nationally recognised framework, designed to formally acknowledge the volunteering of intermediate and secondary school students - SVA students have logged more than 2 million volunteering hours, with around 47,000 active students in 2024. One of the ways we are supporting this partnership is through skills-based volunteering. We give all our team members a volunteering day, which they can use to volunteer with a community group or charity. Promoting skills-based volunteering through partners like SVA allows our team to give back in a way that is meaningful to them.
You can find out more about our community partnerships and the progress we’re making on our sustainability journey on our website.