AIA grants - making a difference with advisers

The AIA Vitality Business and Community Grants programme has awarded 10 grants worth more than $500,000 over the past few years helping their advisers connect with their communities.

Monday, December 20th 2021, 2:32PM

The grants programme supports grassroots health and wellbeing projects championed by advisers across the country.

AIA NZ's chief partnership insurance officer Sam Tremethick says many of the grants were originally awarded in 2020 but were delayed due to Covid-19 restrictions.

"We are so pleased to have been able to support advisers’ businesses with this programme, and the health and wellbeing projects they are passionate about.”

At the start of the year, Simon Gower from Leelee & Gower Insurance Partners helped more than 1,450 children learn to swim in the Waikato region.

With his team of swimming coaches, Gower taught students at Fairfield College and four decile one primary schools how to swim, carrying out over 20,000 individual swimming lessons.

“Our programme would not be possible without financial support so it was great to partner with AIA who shared our vision of trying to improve the health and wellness of tamariki in our community,” Gower says.

Mental wellbeing was another core theme, as Lance Parker-Wadham and the team at Parka Insurances used their grant to put on a series of talks by Sir John Kirwan on mental health and managing depression at local rugby clubs.

Dean Logan and his team at Logan Smythe Associates offered a series of resilience and mindfulness community courses and workshops, along with a podcast series providing free, practical resources packed full of evidence-based tips and tools to help people feel good and function well.

“Without the AIA Vitality Business and Community Grant, quite simply, this project would not have been possible," Logan says.

"It enabled us to bring a series of world-class, evidence-based wellbeing and mindfulness courses, workshops and podcasts to North Canterbury.

“We were thrilled to be able to make such a difference for the people in our local community, and to see first-hand the positive changes to mental health and wellbeing as a result of participation.”

Tradies mental health got a boost nationwide thanks to the great work of Ryan Edwards and The Adviser Platform team who launched ‘Tools Down’, an online platform to raise awareness of mental ill-health and the suicide rate among Kiwi tradies.

“With some AIA Vitality Business and Community Grant activations still to come, we look forward to more adviser community projects coming to life into 2022,” says Tremethick.

Tags: AIA Sam Tremethick Wellness