Tutors ease in to new ACE classes

Kaikoura night classes will begin next week, after the region escaped Government funding cuts that saw Adult Community Education dropped in most of the upper South Island.

Schools in Nelson, Marlborough and Tasman were forced to abandon the classes this year after the Government announced it was shifting funds to priority areas such as boosting literacy and numeracy.

Nationally, funding for Adult Community Education (ACE) was slashed by 80 per cent, from $16 million to $3 million.

Kaikoura ACE coordinator Susi Haberstock said last year 30 per cent of New Zealand's ACE programmes had reapplied for a slice of the reallocated amount of funding.

Kaikoura was successful and evening classes for the first term of 2010 start on Monday.

Courses range from basic home cooking and baking to cheese and jam making, welding, chainsaw safety, barista basics, photography, Maori creative arts and te reo Maori, a small business workshop, speed reading and reading to babies.

Also on offer will be Henno van Vierzen's yoga with Tibetan singing bowls.

To start the term, he offered a class to all Kaikoura's ACE tutors last week.

Mr van Vierzen, who moved to New Zealand from The Netherlands in 2007, also taught yoga night classes last year, several times a week.

He said his classes were for people of every age or fitness level, from beginners to advanced and they have been very popular.

Besides yoga, Mr van Vierzen teaches meditation with the use of the Tibetan singing bowls to find an "inner stillness" that he said was not always easy to achieve.

"Stillness is a state of mind: it's an experience. I can give people that experience at the end of every class."

Originally an accountant by trade, Mr van Vierzen has been practising yoga for nearly a decade.

He said the singing bowls were introduced to him by a yoga teacher and he found them very effective so he learned to use them himself to use while teaching.

Mr van Vierzen's first classes are on Tuesday and Thursday next week from 5.30pm to 7pm at the high school drama room.

Most of Kaikoura's ACE classes will be held at Kaikoura High School and Mrs Haberstock thanked the school for this, but also thanked other venues which will be opening their doors for night classes this term.

She hoped a lot of people would sign up for ACE to support the programme and make sure Kaikoura retained it.

For more information call Susi Haberstock on 319 7382 or Kaikoura High School on 319 5138.

- © Fairfax NZ News