DERRICK IN NEW ZEALAND
ABOUT ME
Derrick was born on September 27, 1986 in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, at 7:47 weighing at 8 lbs 4 ounces. He was a happy baby that made the trek to live in Ponoka, Alberta not even a year later. They soon found out that he was hard of hearing, which led to speaking and learning deficits. Throughout the years he received numerous operations to have them fixed. The result was having to repeat the first grade. Derrick credits repeating the first grade for creating a strong base for learning. He did well in primary and secondary school while participating in numerous activities.
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Derrick then moved on to get his Social Work diploma in 2010 with Red Deer College. He was left with a deep thirst for learning, so he attended the University of Calgary and worked to earn two Bachelor of Arts degrees, one in sociology and the other in psychology.
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During his years of post-secondary, Derrick worked in the social services field working for three non-profit organizations. Derrick worked in housing first settings in two of the non-profits dealing with homeless
individuals, people with addictions, and people with mental health issues. The other non-profit was working with people on federal parole in a halfway house. All of these places were rewarding and taught him about patience and dealing with a marginalized population.
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Currently Derrick is a Masters of Public Policy candidate with the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan. His thesis topic, not surprisingly, is dealing with homelessness using an urban comparison in New Zealand and Canada. He has completed his first year of course work and is now working on his thesis research.
Derrick is currently living in a community suburb called Torbay. It is about a 5 minute drive to Brown's Bay and a 10 minute drive to Albany, a town just a 20 minutes drive north of Auckland on the North Shore. It is part of the Auckland Council under the Hibiscus and Bays area Local Board. The Auckland Council has a total of 21 local boards and accounts for around a third of New Zealand's population. Auckland itself is the economic hub of New Zealand but is not the capitol. New Zealand does not have any provinces or an upper house in their central government. That means the central government often has the same powers as the provinces do in Canada. The local/regional governments have much the same responsibility as municipal governments do, but because there is no written constitution, the dilineation of responsibility is a little more cloudy.
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I am working with a co-supervisor here with Massey University in Albany. It takes me around a half hour bus ride just to get into Albany and then I can either take a shuttle from the main campus or walk to the satellite campus. It takes me about an hour by bus to get from where I live to Auckland, where I am completing half of my research here.