He Iwi Kotahi Tatou Trust, Moerewa

Ngahau Davis, Nga Puhi, Moerewa resident

"Tama tu, tama ora, Tama noho tama mate. Translated this says: To stand is to live, To lie down is to die. I suppose that whakatauki or saying encapsulates what we have done in Moerewa. When we talk about the journey of the town, I look at it in maybe three stages. In the first stage we always talk about it very simplistically as the Nobody Stage, and I suppose the Nobody Stage talks about a time when we're in that place and I'll use the word 'victim' where a lot of things have happened to us as a town.

"For example, you know when we used to run workshops with people that hadn't been working for a long time we would talk and say things like, 'Hands up all those here in this room today that were at the meeting that decided to downsize the freezing works' - nobody would put their hands up. 'Hands up all those people that were at the meetings that decided to close down the dairy factory, remove the banks, cut the health services'. See, the realisation was that they had very little to do with those decisions, but those decisions majorly impacted on the community.

"Because of the high unemployment it was like a real spiritual apathy through the town. We had a lot of young people with very little to do, and that impacted in the sense that we had a lot of damage done on property, we had a lot of graffiti, the place was graffitied to the max."

Narrator

"The closure of the dairy factory and the downsizing of the meat works and railways was a severe blow to Moerewa. Businesses plummeted from 28 to 5 and unemployment soared. In response to this, the community decided to set up the He Iwi Kotahi Tatou Trust."

Ngahau

"We were going to do the community development buzz. We didn't have a clue what that was; we knew that it had to be led by the community. Nobody else was going to care about Moerewa more than those that lived in Moerewa.

"We called a public meeting, and I remember that day [in 1998] - it was just amazing because we put up this big sign right around the building saying, 'Moerewa on the Move' - that was our caption. And I remember the meeting was chokka. People were hanging out the door; people were looking through the windows. And our question was, 'What are we going to do, where do we want to go?' Everyone jumped up, and there was a lot of shopkeepers there that said, 'Paint the town, paint the town!'. And we could have painted the town. It was graffitied - it had been damaged. But what's going to stop that from going on after we've painted it? We realised in those early days the first thing that had to change in Moerewa was the whakaro of the people, because the wairua, the spirit of the people, had been broken from the succession of the decisions made that they had no control over.

"It was the battle of the toilet that summed it all up. Some real bad stuff happened in the old toilet. People were too scared to go into the old toilet, so what happened was Council just took a bulldozer and bulldozed it down. But the people, they said, 'We want a toilet!' We were just lay people, and did not know where to start. Somebody said you had to do a plan, so we rang the Council and said, 'So what do you do?' They told us, 'You need to have public meetings, you need to draw up a plan, you need to have at least two public meetings so that you get an agreement on where it's going to go.'

"So away we went, we had a public meeting, people came and starting talking about the toilets and then we went out and asked people, put up pictures of what type of toilets they could have. We did all this sort of ground work and then we got all this stuff together and then went to Council and said, 'Right, people of Moerewa want the toilet!'

"So we went in there [to the Council], we were armed, we had our plan, we had the picture of the toilet where we wanted it and we had our 450 signatures that we had got over the weekend before that meeting. The mayor says, 'OK guys, show me your stuff.' It was about mobilising the people, understanding the political processes behind that to enable us to actually make something happen in this way and it was a battle won.

"So we built the new toilet and remade the old park, with benches and swings, and then we held a party in the town to celebrate our success. We had a new park and grounds too, and they were built by the people - and that was another lesson that we had learned. We had learned, don't get anybody from outside to do what we can do here. So it was all about getting our local people, many of whom were unemployed, involved."

Narrator

"With the victory of the toilets behind them the Trust then started on the next stage [in 1999] - a plan for the redevelopment of the town."

Ngahau

"I was really a bit scared before the meeting, because I had all these ideas of what I thought it should be and we were going to open it up to the community. What if they didn't think how we in the Trust were thinking? But we found we could work together as a whole community. We started with no money, so it was purely upon the dreams and the visions of what the people of Moerewa wanted to do - and they started to see it fulfilled before them. An old overgrown roller-skating rink has been turned into a skateboard park designed by the local kids and built by parents. The main street has had a major facelift and now houses several successful new businesses. Now we are seeing a renaissance of creativity - the New Time, and it's exciting."

Ngahau

"When I first met Hemi, the Community Employment Group's field worker, he came and sat with us for about an hour just listening to us prattle on, carry on about our vision. And then I never saw him for a year and I thought, jeepers! Hemi Toia man, he's a real koretaki [regular] fella; you know we must have put him off!"

Hemi Toia, Community Employment Group development facilitator

"When I first met peer representatives from Moerewa, we in fact took a journey, took a bus tour out of the region to show people different ideas to stimulate thought. Then I came back and met, as Ngahau mentioned, and heard what they were going to do and left it. I thought, 'Let's find out.' I thought, 'Let's see if they can do what they say they are going to do and how much commitment they really have to making things happen.'

I observed, and then came back in and, yes, things had happened, and that gives me confidence. If I was going to put my name and my neck out for any organisation and commit agency resources - in this case Community Employment Group resources - I needed to be confident that the investment was going to be a good one for all concerned."

Ngahau

"So he came back and he supported us. I liked the way he did it. He uses this korero of the art of uselessness. So every time we had a meeting, and I knew that he was there, I'd stand up and say, 'Yes look - this is what we are gonna do and Hemi will talk to you about it'. Hemi would sit in the meeting and not say anything. So we got to do it."

Hemi

"One of the greatest things you look for is leaders, people that make things happen. I believe the greatest task of a leader is to keep hope alive, and this community needed hope, to be not only kept alive but to be brought back to life; to be resurrected.

"There's a saying: 'A turtle can only move forward when it sticks its neck out' - and sometimes we as government workers have to stick our necks out and back organisations. Maybe it doesn't fit fully into the criteria, but if we believe in it enough and if we are confident in the individuals, we should be prepared to put our necks on the line as well.

"Because ultimately the people in the community, they're doing that - workers like Ngahau, Debbie, Cyril and the Trust, they're putting their necks on the line and more so. We should be able to do similarly, not try and tell them to do what we think should happen, not what some government agent thinks or some government department believes is the best approach. We should be using whatever we can to encourage, support and assist the community to develop according to its desires and strengths."

Ngahau

"What we're seeing is a lot more people that are keen, creative, and who want to do things for themselves and are not scared. They will just go out there and say, 'Hey look I wanna do …'. We get a lot of people now coming through the door saying, 'Hey Ngahau, we'd like to try this, can we do this?' - and I say, 'Go for it, don't ask me for permission to do that'."

Cyril Heta, Nga Puhi, Moerewa resident

"Everyone is turning their passion - what people would call their hobby - turning it around and making their hobby their existence. Rather than working in a job that they work from 8 'til 5 or whatever … we encourage them to take the step and use their skill, their hobby, their passion. Through the businesses that have started that's exactly what's happening."

Ngahau

"People have come and said, 'How did you do this?'. Half the time we're also going, yeah, how did we do this? It was a lot of trial and error, and a lot of honesty and understanding about where we're at. Being able to make the mistakes and being allowed to be able to learn was important."

Cyril

"Making sure everyone is involved is important. Everyone has got a part to play. We figure every single person in Moerewa is of value to this place, not just a handful or just the businesses, everybody. Everybody plays a crucial part from the youngest to the oldest and I think it's because we value everyone that way, no matter."

Ngahau

"You know you have the riff-raff in every town, but they're of value to us. You know a lot of our people have gone through a hell of a lot and we still get a bit of damage and we still get a bit of graffiti - and that's their journey. And I've got to be honest - the other day there was a fight in the middle of town. That means we've still got a lot of work to go. We haven't finished this journey, we're well on the way, we're achieving some major milestones, and we've come to a point when we say, 'Yes we can do it, yes we can do it!'"

In 2004, the Trust decided it was time to assess what impact it had made on the Moerewa community over the past 10 years. With funding from the Alcohol Advisory Council (ALAC), Community Employment Group and Te Puni Kōkiri, the Trust engaged a Māori research agency, Te Ropu Whariki, based at Massey University. Researchers conducted focus groups and reported back to the community six months later.

The Trust's review revealed that while it was important to support community initiatives, it had to step back and let people run their own projects. It also realised that the entrepreneurial opportunities that opened up in the town had mainly been for an older age group. The Trust now had to shift its focus to the town's younger people.

Ngahau

"We needed to find out for sure how people feel about what has happened. We wanted real feedback. We even put in the names of some people who might not be happy.

"Some of the issues went over how we had engaged the community. People sat back and wanted the Trust to do the whole job for them."

An incident in the town, when a man was assaulted by two youths, revealed some important changes in Moerewa attitudes. First, that the community now had less tolerance towards violence, but that also there was a feeling that the Trust had somehow failed.

"We had this scary thought that people were expecting the Trust to bring their children up."

Since 2003, the Trust has concentrated on providing opportunities for young people, using information technology and multimedia. A venture into film-editing led to a successful entry in a short-film competition. Its film, Mata, reached the top 10 of about 80 entries and was screened at the Civic Theatre in Auckland.

A recording studio was established in June 2004 and, in October 2004, a radio show, Te Kupenga, was launched. It plays on Friday and Saturday nights on northern Māori radio station Tautoko FM, based at Mangamuka.

The Trust also runs a housing project that employs three people full-time in retrofitting and repairing houses to a safe level. The project has been funded by Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority and Te Puni Kōkiri, among other funders.

A new prison, which opened in 2005, 20 minutes away at Ngawha, may provide jobs to replace some of those lost at the freezing works and dairy factory, but the Trust does not see that as the whole answer. It prefers to see the self-reliance and innovation that has transformed Moerewa continue.

Ngahau

"There is a real difference with these other opportunities. What we [the Trust] are trying to open up here is choice - to give people ownership."

The Trust has funding for three years (from 2004) under the Maori Community Development programme to support Moerewa's developing businesses and multimedia ventures.

The Community Employment Group was disestablished in September 2004. The lead role in community employment has now transferred to Work and Income.

Prepared for publication in September 2003 and updated in discussion with the Trust in August 2005.

For more information contact:

Ngahau Davis
Email: heiwi@igrin.co.nz
Tel/Fax: 09 404 1299