Kotahitanga - Building resilient communities

More support for people with housing needs

The Government recently announced funding that will help us do more to support people living in emergency motel accommodation or facing homelessness.

It is investing $31 million over the next four years for 67 intensive case managers and navigators, and a further $16 million for social services.

The funding will be used to support families and whānau with children, and people with mental health needs who are living in emergency motel accommodation, or who are at high risk of homelessness.

Housing and supporting our most vulnerable families and whānau is one of our biggest priorities.

Intensive case managers will take a holistic approach to people’s needs, but where more support is needed, navigators will co-ordinate services and provide ongoing support for people with housing needs.

Navigators will work with the community, health professionals, government agencies and NGOs to ensure people get the help they need.

Intervening early to ensure people don’t become homeless is really important. This investment will enable us to be much more proactive.

Helping migrant whānau to settle into Aotearoa

Local iwi and around 80 men and women from 60 different ethnic communities gathered recently in Awakairangi (Lower Hutt).

Common threads in the wide-ranging korero were about building a treaty-based, multicultural Aotearoa, gratitude for manaakitanga shown to newcomers and a strong desire to promote te reo.

Kaumatua of Te Runanganui o Te Atiawa, Dr Kara Puketapu, told the multicultural whānau that Māori are vitally interested in them and their cultures.

“The world we leave for our mokopuna will be a joined-up community made up of all the peoples of the world, not just New Zealanders.”

Dr Puketapu and the National President of Multicultural New Zealand, Pancha Narayanan, [pictured] have spearheaded the development of Multicultural New Zealand’s groundbreaking ‘Huarahi Hou’ framework.

‘Huarahi Hou’ raises awareness of the Treaty of Waitangi and contemporary Māori culture among ethnic communities. It talks about cultivating strong, ongoing relationships with their local tangata whenua, stimulating curiosity about each other’s lives through formal, and informal marae visits, and creating opportunities for artistic and cultural exchanges.

For Pancha, a Malaysian with South Indian heritage who migrated to New Zealand with his Chinese-Malaysian wife Pohswan in the mid-1980s, it began as a personal journey.

“The accepted view that we were living in a western European type society, rather than a treaty-based Pacific country, is a poor reflection of who we really are. The more I learnt about Māori culture the more similarities I found with my own, especially the way traditional, pre-colonisation Māori put women, at the centre of everything.”

“E Tū Whānau, which is a strong supporter of Multicultural NZ, also emphasises the importance of traditional Māori views on the safety of women and children. That link with E Tū Whānau, offered me another way to build my knowledge and sense of connection to Māori values,” says Pancha.