The Ranui Action Project

The Ranui Action Project (RAP) is an example of how central and local government can support community decision-making. It illustrates the importance of:

• involving a wide variety of community interests
• government partners being prepared to invest time and resources.

It also highlights the skills and social capital communities can gain from successful participatory processes.

Ranui is a low-socioeconomic suburb of Waitakere City. It has a diverse population, including 20% Māori and 26% Pacific peoples. More than a third of the population is under 15 years old.

In mid-2000, the Waitakere Health Planning Group developed a Waitakere Health Plan. RAP was one of 10 projects proposed in the plan. RAP's aim is to improve the health and wellbeing of Ranui residents by addressing all aspects of health in a holistic way.

Waitakere City Council helped the Ranui community to apply for funding from the Ministry of Health and the Stronger Communities Action Fund (SCAF) administered by the Ministry of Social Development.

A group of Ranui people formed an initial Steering Group, appointed a full-time project manager and set up RAP as an incorporated society with rules ensuring that ownership of the project stayed with the wider Ranui community. The community then worked with the funders and the Council to create a devolved community funding agreement, initially for three years.

The governance challenge has been to get a good balance between having a small group of people to take on the legal and administrative duties, while ensuring that the wider community maintains ownership and oversight of governance and management.

An external facilitator helped the community develop RAP's governance structures and processes. A RAP Committee meets monthly, and a RAP Society meets every two months. Māori, Pacific Island and youth focus groups also meet regularly and report to the RAP Society. Formal policies and procedures guide decision-making, including those on funding allocation.

A recent review of the organisation has been undertaken and a Transition Committee established to implement its recommendations.

Milestones include:

• Project launch - the launch of the project, in 2001, at the Ranui Fun Festival was attended by Steve Maharey as Minister Responsible for the Community and Voluntary Sector, the Mayor of Waitakere City, and about 2500 Ranui people.
• Community profile - data was collected from a range of organisations to develop an in-depth profile of the Ranui community.
• Community visioning - 400 people at the Ranui Futures Creation Festival participated in a 'community-visioning' process, which created a vision of the Ranui community to guide tangible projects.
• Action plans - working groups have been established to implement seven action plans relating to young people's development, health and social services, public safety, education, employment and business, environment, and community identity.
• Purchase of the RAP House - we now house Medlab Diagnostic, the Health Information Centre and a number of other health providers, who rent our rooms to deliver their services in the community.
• Prioritised projects - a number of community projects have gained momentum and are now the focus of developing social business enterprises. These projects include Radio Ranui, the Swanui Business Association (representing the Ranui and nearby Swanson communities) and the Ranui Community Garden.
• Evaluation  - took place up until December 2004 through SHORE (Centre for Social and Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation) and Te Ropu Whariki, Massey University, and was funded by our funders. A report on the findings of the Ranui Social Cohesion Surveys 2001 and 2004 was completed in May 2005.

Today, RAP has an increasingly wide reach into the community. Schools, churches and local clubs are involved, while Waitakere City Council, government agencies and health providers are partnering RAP to help achieve its vision.

Factors that have helped make RAP successful include:

• Wide involvement - the wide and active participation by all key groups within the community, including Māori, Pacific peoples, other ethnic groups, and young people.
• Resources - the partnerships with Waitakere City Council, government agencies and health providers that have provided RAP with access to resources.
• Project manager - having a project manager to help keep things moving.
• Good communication - communicating with the Ranui Community through the RAP RAVE newsletter, website and Radio Ranui.
• Fun - above all, the project ensures there are plenty of opportunities to have fun!

We've also faced our challenges, which include:

• Getting everyone involved - getting all sectors of the community involved and engaged and building community pride and leadership skill.
• Going bottom-up - changing 'top-down' mindsets within the community and government agencies.
• Opening up - persuading the community to invest in intangibles like a visioning process, and to accept external assistance.
• Going slow - getting people to understand the time it takes to develop and sustain relationships and partnerships with people, set up project infrastructure, and get results from the development work.
• Keeping up - achieving our goals with the resources of a continually stretched project manager and volunteers
• Dealing with conflict - dealing positively with inevitable conflict.
• Resolving Treaty issues - working constructively through Treaty issues.

We've tried to meet the challenges by:

• Involving people - We've kept people interested by doing short term results-driven projects. Also, having focus groups representing different sectors of the community has helped us form connections throughout the community.
• Focusing on the positive - We've tried to focus on the positive, rather than on 'fixing problems'. We've also worked hard to give local people the skills to participate in and lead projects.
• Incentives - We need and have heaps of volunteers. It has helped to build in small incentives for participating, such as training certificates, sending people to conferences and providing food at meetings.
• Building true partnerships - Getting to know our external partners has been important. They've spent time in our community, which has helped to establish trust. They've been happy to put time into the relationship and come to Ranui for face-to-face reporting.
• Coping with conflict - Our partnership with Violence Free Waitakere has brought Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) workshops to Ranui. These workshops have provided excellent training in conflict resolution at the same time as being a community-building catalyst.
• Involving local kaumatua and kuia  has helped us to work through our Treaty obligations

Because we're working in unchartered waters, we're continually involved in a process of 'do and review'. This is challenging and time-consuming, but necessary.

We're very optimistic about RAP. The community is involved, and things are happening.

Things are really on a roll as we continue community consultation on our Strategic Plan and work our way through the great number of funding applications in this funding round. It's very exciting to work with community aspirations - documenting them, putting a plan together and discussing appropriate and realistic ways groups can monitor and evaluate their project as it progresses.

"We're Ranui people with that Ranui pride, We're the best out west, Now that's undenied!"- From the RAP Rap by Ranui musician Paul Wells.

Prepared for publication in September 2003 and revised in August 2005 by RAP Acting Projects Manager Emma Frost.
For more information contact:

Emma Frost, Acting Projects Manager
Ranui Action Plan
PO Box 70065, Ranui, Waitakere City
Email: rap@ranui.org.nz
Tel/Fax: 09 832 6048