Kia ora e hoa,
I hope you’re moving into the long weekend with some quality time planned (in rest or play)!
I’m looking forward to catching up on a few nights of not-enough sleep, and maybe even clearing some of the unfinished carvings off my workbench!
Birthday presents
Last year, our Koha Tree and Shoebox Christmas community asked if they could help with birthday presents for children cared for by social services like Women’s Refuge. We checked this with a few of our friends in those services here in Porirua and they agreed that this would be helpful and appreciated by the children and whānau they work with.
To test this, we carried an armload of presents from our community to Porirua Living Violence Free. This team works on the incredibly important and hard challenge of breaking cycles of violence at all layers in a whānau.
I’m always astounded by how we can be so empathetic to children in situations outside their control and choice, and then toss that inconvenient empathy when those same children become adults shaped by those same situations. At which point we tell them they should have made better choices. So doing this work with both parents and children is really, really important.
These gifts were for a group of tamariki who take part in the programme and had a birthday in the next four weeks. The team at Porirua Living Violence Free put on birthday parties to remind them they’re special, and as you know, having a koha aroha or gift of love given to you by the community shows our tamariki and neighbours that their community believes that too. That’s why we’re here!
Last week we took some more gifts out to Teaomanino Trust to again test that this was worth doing, and the team and families they care for made it clear that this is a kaupapa we should continue.
So, we’re going to make this happen on Koha Tree. While Shoebox Christmas was the first kaupapa we used this new platform of ours for, we built it to be reusable, elastic, and scalable with three main objectives in mind:
Community-based projects where we bring our neighbours together to create kōtahitanga (togetherness), and express our aroha and kindness as a collective.
Create opportunities for rangatahi (young person) and other community leaders to lead these projects themselves with learning and support wrapped around them.
When possible, create opportunities for rangatahi to lead the work of extending or ‘growing a branch’ off Koha Tree, to add new digital functions and services that the platform can offer - because figuring out how to leverage technology to scale their impact and values is something we need them to do, to address the widespread challenges my generation have helped create.
We know why and what we need to do. To figure out the ‘how’ we’ll work with a rangatahi (young person) from Porirua as they lead this kaupapa and bring it to life on Koha Tree. There’s lots to figure out:
How do people want to take part?
How should the website work?
How do we write up the jobs for the developers to do to make that magic on the computer screen happen?
How do we best test that etc etc.
That’s a fun and learning-filled piece of work to lead - so, like the leadership of Shoebox Christmas, this is a great opportunity for a rangatahi to grow and develop while bringing their values to life.
Like Te Wānanga o Raukawa support our coaching of rangatahi to learn leadership through Shoebox Christmas, Trust House Foundation are helping fund the this particular pilot of a new branch on Koha Tree. Which means we can pay that rangatahi in part-time employment as well creating those learning outcomes - Ngā mihi nui Trust House!
Once our young leader is on board, we’ll reach out again but in the meantime, if there’s anybody in Porirua who would like to take part in a workshop to figure out how we should do this, please click here to let me know by clicking the button. I’ll ask your email address and then reach out when we’re ready to get together and talk about how we can make it work.
Arita
If you’ve taken part in Shoebox Christmas, you might have interacted with Arita, who was our national Shoebox Christmas Data Lead and kaupapa coordinator for Porirua over the last few years.
Arita has been part of our rangatahi leadership programme since joining the pilot when he was 16 after realising college wasn't for him.
Last month he started his first 'bigger team' job as a Product Analyst with Te Whatu Ora (Health New Zealand) and has been reflecting on what's made that job awesome so far.
I asked for one piece of advice from him for teams looking at bringing rangatahi on board and as usual, his wisdom is worth sharing in a wider context than that.
He said "Put the people over the work."
He loves the way his team start with whakawhanaungatanga or connections, “it's not all work, work, work,” he said. “It's people, people, people, then work.”
Awesome advice for all of us from this young rangatira.
This was him co-judging a Young Enterprise event late last year.
There are a few other cool updates I’d like to share, but you’ve already had to scroll too much, so I’ll leave the kōrero here until next time.
Have an awesome long weekend, and if you see someone literally, or metaphorically throwing white paint on a rainbow crossing, please remind them no religion gives them the right to stop anybody being proud of who they are. More here.
Ngā manaakitanga,
Pera
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