Two of Invercargill's biggest community-led projects will share the proceeds from a mass quiz night at ILT Stadium Southland this Wednesday: the Grace Street Project and the Hawthorndale Care Village.

Southland's Biggest Quiz Night, put on by More FM with GWD Motor Group, is on Wednesday 4 November. Teams are made up of four people and entry is $80 a team, with tickets sold through the stadium's Flicket page. The stadium's listing says entrants will also be in the running to win a new car.

The two beneficiaries are at very different stages.

Hawthorndale Care Village, on the old Hawthorndale Primary School site, was officially opened on 20 March 2025 and by then had sold all 10 of its villas and filled 86 of 100 care-house beds, with 72 residents transferring from the former Calvary Hospital. It is modelled on the Dutch De Hogeweyk village, where people with dementia live in ordinary-looking houses rather than a hospital ward. Stage one has 13 care houses of six or seven residents each, 10 villas, and a village centre housing a chapel, workshop and dairy as well as a café, gym, library, hairdresser and theatre.

The village is a not-for-profit run by the Hawthorndale Charitable Trust, chaired by Frank O'Boyle, with Margaret Brown as village manager. Even with the build finished, the trust is still raising money. The Southland Foundation holds a Hawthorndale Care Village Fund, seeded with $100,000 from Jim Hannan, whose late wife Helen was cared for at Calvary, with the aim of growing it to a level that can help cover the village's running costs.

The Grace Street Project is still a building site. The Invercargill Community Connections Charitable Trust (IC2) is converting the former Grace Street Chapel in South Invercargill into a two-storey, 800 square metre community hub with a youth technology space, education studios, co-working rooms and a community lounge, next to the South Alive campus.

Stage one broke ground in September 2025 with Brown Goble Construction as main contractor, and the trust says stage two is planned to start this month, subject to further donor support. Architects McCulloch Architects are working on the design. The trust describes the project as a community-led attempt to tackle intergenerational disadvantage in South Invercargill through education, employment, enterprise and connection.

The quiz is on Wednesday 4 November at ILT Stadium Southland, 18 Surrey Park Road. Teams of four, $80 per team, via stadiumsouth.flicket.co.nz.