First "International" Summit

The crew from Hamilton arrived bright-eyed and bushy tailed On Sunday to join the Auckland tutors and volunteers for StarJam's first multi-StarPod Summit. Yes it's true we only have two at the moment but the north-south team spirit started within a few minutes. Starting with spontaneous CoolJam 'workshop' performances we saw Ali from North Shore (Auckland) Dazzling Dance singing a very entertaining version of "My favorite things." She teamed up with Kat and Charrissa from Hamilton's Sensational Singing workshop to give a fantastic performance. The words they created were something else.... all about Blue StarJam T shirts and sparkly sequins things, which they said were some of their favorite things. Each of the four group performances was stunning especially and they had only had 30 minutes to prepare. The spontaneous Dazzling Dance performance included Jessica (volunteer Central Hip Hop- Auckland), Carola, tutor West Dazzling Dance - Auckland, Loren and Laurelle, the two Dazzling Dance tutors from Hamilton workshops and Phil and Susan, volunteers from Auckland. There was more hilarity and some careful manoevering in the musical wheelchairs game. Amongst all the magical moments shared amongst the group were some really moving stories with tissues needed here and there. The group shot was taken at afternoon tea time when everyone down-tooled their drinks and scones to pose. Thanks to Patrick Bellett who took these great shots for coming to join in on the activities. Roll on next year's Summit.

Darryl Pascoe wins Volunteer Award

Our now-famous Darryl was announced the winner of the 2010 Intrepid Travel Volunteer Awards last night at a presentation ceremony held at St Matthews in the City church. He was chosen out of 21 finalists. Te Radar hosted the evening - very entertaining. The Honourable Tariana Turia, Minister for Community and Voluntary Sector presented the award to Darryl. What was really cool was that she referred to his humility in her speech, in the exciting lead up to the announcement.

Bonnie looked very proud of her dad, understandably so.

Predictably Darryl didn’t even cast a vote for himself however he had over 500 fans who voted for him.

He wins a $5000 travel prize with Intrepid Travel and we receive a cash and advertising package to the value of $10,000.

May Monthly Get-together

Another big bunch of Jammers rocked up for the monthly StarPod Jam In, although some may call it all sorts of other things. The truth is that the offical CoolJam ShowOff for this month was by the West Dazzling Dancers and they certainly showed off. Carola designed a 'circus' dance complete with lion taming, multi-coloured balls and flying trapeze.... well now I'm getting carried away, but there were clowns! The co-ordination of the ball handling was stunning. Then Hero Awards were presented to all the Jammers who travelled to Hamilton for the launch event last month. All the new Jammers from Hamilton certainly loved the big welcome from their brothers and sisters up the road from the big smoke, Auckland. So Hero Awards went to all the Velvet Vocals, all the Magic Movers and Ben Matthews. Patrick Bellett StarJam's photographer rode all the way to Hamilton on his motorbike to take photos at the Hamilton launch. A Hero Award for Patrick!! We'll catch up with you soon, Patrick. Another Hero for Hamilton was Charlotte, our trustee volunteer for the Velvet Vocals workshop who drove a carload of Velvets to the Tron. Daniel awarded Kristina Cullen a Hero Award for always helping set up at the monthly get-togethers. The FreeJam turned up some fantastic talent. We look forward to seeing more of it next month. Meantime stay cool all you Jammers