If you can understand Mario Kart, you can understand equity.
And if you don't know what Mario Kart is, read on.
Kia ora e hoa!
Nearly two months into 2024 and it’s been a fairly full-on start to the year. Well done on making it through, regardless of how tired you might already feel. (And if you don’t feel tired, that’s worthy of congratulations too!)
Either way, you’re one of the amazing hearts and pairs of hands behind the Shoebox Christmas and Koha Tree movement, and we’re lucky to have you here, caring enough to make a difference in your village.
While some of our little community have been busy responding to new or planned legislation, some have been sitting feeling paralysed in the wrestle between hope and worry about what of our Governments campaign promises they’ll keep. Others have been planning ahead for ways to address the increased hardship coming for those of our communities already marginalised and what that means over the next 5, 10, 20 years, while some of our politicians don’t seem to be able to connect those dots.
I wish some of those politicians were standing there with Arita, me, and our Te Hapori Matihiko mates last week in the wānanga on Digital Futures for rangatahi across South Auckland.
In the wānanga, Katerina from Aorere College gave a simple reminder about those dots and the concept of equity using the Mario Kart game.
She told us how in the Mario Kart game, those at the back get a booster to help bring them up so everybody gets the same go at the same game.
It’s not unfair that those boosters go to the cars at the back. Those who started at the front don’t need the same boost.
Later we talked about how those at the front often don't realise that's where they are, only seeing those on either side of their car, not those behind them.
So I wanted to thank you again, firstly for looking around, and secondly for caring about what you see.
Community is all of us. You, me, those you can and can’t see.
Kotahitanga means all of us together.
In the next few weeks, we’ll share our first Koha Tree Catch Ups - a series of short Vlogs and interviews, discussing some of the questions and topics you asked us to communicate more of, to continue bringing us all together.
This post isn’t strictly to do with Shoebox Christmas. So we’ve put it in a new section on our newsletter called Koha Tree & Community - kōrero worth sharing. Throughout the year we’ll share things here that aren’t 100% critical to the Shoebox Christmas kaupapa but we think worth taking the time to share.
It can be hard for me to separate some of the other things we do throughout the year from this community and movement of ours, because there are so many connections between the different kaupapa and the work we all do with and for our communities. We all play our parts weaving the different strands of harakeke (flax) that make up the whariki (mat) being continually added to - and at the end of the day, they’re all about the same thing: community, kotahitanga, and aroha.
That said, if you don’t want to receive these non-critical emails, please just follow the instructions here.
Kia pai te wiki, have a good week!
Pera