Our first face to face wānanga with our amazing rangatahi
(That's our group of rangatahi leading Shoebox Christmas across the motu).
“I want to be able to role model to the rangatahi in our community that it starts with us.” - Vyaan (Ōpōtiki).
Tēnā koe e hoa!
On the Sunday before last, we held our first face-to-face wānanga with our rangatahi leading Shoebox Christmas across Aotearoa. We were lucky enough to hold this in our Te Ātiawa ki Whakarongotai iwi office in Waikanae and nearly all of our amazing team made it.
I started writing this two days later and I was still exhausted, still inspired, and I’m still excited about our next wānanga!
I’ve tried to summarise all of the magic that happened on the day, but if you’re not interested in that, scroll down to the to ‘sign ups’ heading. Spoiler: it’s nearly time!
PS the next summary will be from one of our comms leads, our rangatahi don’t need me to speak for them!
Who we are
After our whakawhanaungatanga and getting to know each other face to face, we spent some time sharing our individual aspirations, and our collective values - who we are as a team. We reflected on how our values can drive our behaviour without us realising it.
One of our key topics in this wānanga was the importance of finding mahi/work or creating opportunities for mahi that align with our values both in this instance and as a truth outside Shoebox Christmas. We’ve been using Whare Tapa Wha to check in on our hauora/wellness and reflect on what’s affecting it. and this weekend we added a layer by defining our values as the foundations of the whare where we work.