Ngā mihi o te wā Pōhutukawa
Nau mai haere mai ki 2025 - welcome to 2025!
Kia ora e hoa,
Ngā mihi o te wā puawai Pōhutukawa - greetings to you in this time of the Pōhutukawa bloom.
A lot of last year was spent in desperation and scrambling responses and this year is likely to be just as exhausting. In my (humble-but-sometimes-shouted) opinion, kōtahitanga and aroha are always the antidotes. I could ask ChatGPT to cite some research papers to back me up on that, but from what I know:
The best way to feel aroha inwards, is to give aroha outwards (aroha mai, aroha atu). This is how communities and society are meant to work and an evolutionary response - not many of us would have survived on our own back in the day (or in this day), and our bodies are wired for that.
Kōtahitanga and aroha-driven connections with other humans are like the root network feeding those Pōhutukawa blooms my whānau and I shared our New Years break under. When I least feel like talking with anyone, it’s usually a sign that I need to. When it feels like the world has had the colour sucked out in a rush towards austerity, those connections matter even more.
Thank you for being a part of that network, a part of your village and the kōtahitanga that is the Shoebox Christmas and Koha Tree community.
Responding as best we can
Last year we had more and more whānau reaching out directly and asking for support. These were parents who weren’t connected to a school or social service we work with so we couldn’t help out like we normally do.
A few days before Christmas we launched a mana-protecting messaging platform to allow people in the community to contact those whānau directly without relying on our very small crew and resource to try coordinate/facilitate. We did this because so many of those social services and organisations who might otherwise try and facilitate help for these whānau, have had their funding (and therefore their capacity to support) cut.
Of course, it wasn’t perfect and we were still going right up until Christmas Eve to make it work usefully but it did the basics in a growing crisis of support being stripped from those who need it most. It meant individuals could mobilise to connect with those nearby who needed connection, without exchanging their email, phone number, or Facebook profile. The goal was for it to make things better than they would be without it, and that happened, but we’ll keep improving in the next couple of months. I’ll talk more about how we might use that as a community later on in the year but feel free to reach out if you want to talk more think it could be of use for a kaupapa you care about.
Not a political newsletter, but…
Today is the last day for submissions on the Treaty Principles Bill, if it matters that a party who received 8% of the vote want to change the interpretation of the founding document of Aotearoa, I hope you take 5 minutes to make a submission.
Your submission can be as quick or as in depth as you like.
If you already know how to submit, here's the direct link:
If you need guidance,
I hope you spend your time on the stuff that matters most this year.
Arohanui (lots of love),
Pera
Kia ora uso, you and your team do super valuable work and is most needed in these times. Alofa atu.