Rangitāmiro
Partners

“This wasn’t just about having your teeth sorted, this was about completely changing the appearance and confidence of a lot of our people, it was quite emotional.”

Far North whānau experienced life changing transformation when $120,000 in dental hygiene services was donated through Te Hau Ora o Ngāpuhi Whānau Ora.

Manawatu Dentist Ian Carpenter had recently retired from his practice but continued offering free services for people throughout Te Ika-a-Maui, so Te Puna Manaaki Manager Shamwari Civil got in touch.

“Ian’s been a dentist for over 30 years, and he decided to create a mobile clinic with a Dental Bus.  We arranged for Ian and his wife to come up north to deliver dental care for whānau like fillings, extractions, capping, cleaning – everything. Our books were heaving with whānau desperately in need of an oral hygienist, and we wanted to get as many through as possible. It was about making the connections, creating a supportive space to register whānau and filling the appointments. We contacted as many whānau as possible hoping to get 90 people booked in. During that week the dentists treated 108 whānau which is incredible.”

Whānau like local wahine Nikki, who Whānau Ora Navigator, Michelle Absolum, discovered working at a local service station.

“Nikki had been working in hospo which she loves. But she was whakama about her appearance and changed jobs where she volunteered to do the night shift so less people would see her.  I went in late one evening to fill up and Nikki was there. I noticed when she was talking to me, she was hiding. I told her who I was, what I do for mahi, and that we had a mobile dental clinic coming and would she be keen. She then asked if they would fix her teeth and I knew they would, so I booked her an appointment.”

The Whānau Ora team were ready to go when the Carpenters arrived Michelle recalls they wasted no time getting started. 

“They were smashing out 10 – 12 whānau a day and some had to come back for a second appointment. We were talking about how your mouth health affects your overall wellbeing. Many of our people were experiencing a lot of discomfort due to the lack of access to affordable dental care. One tane looked very unwell getting out of the car when he arrived for his appointment. His mouth was quite infected and within half an hour he had ten teeth pulled out. They made him some dentures, fitted them and now he’s back online doing his māra kai posts and looking well. Plus, he’s smiling. This wasn’t just about having your teeth sorted, this was about completely changing the appearance and confidence of a lot of our people, it was quite emotional.”

Shamwari is proud of the mahi they did alongside Ian for whānau like Nikki.

“Her transformation was immediate. Here’s a young, attractive wahine who had been hiding her face for a long time. These days she’s smiling and she’s back working in hospitality, which she loves. Ian and his wife completely changed people’s lives, and that week of dental work was worth $122,000. They did it all for nothing. Amazing couple.”

The needs of whānau in the Far North differ to those in other areas of Region 1, which is challenging for Shamwari and her colleagues.

“Whānau in Tāmaki Makaurau can access support easily, it’s right there on your doorstep. You could throw a stone and hit a kai pack, a dentist and all these free services. Up here you need to travel a few hours to experience that. We have a real soft spot for our whānau up here, people forget how isolated they are. They come into town once a fortnight to grab their groceries and get their stuff done. And if they can’t get it sorted during that time, they go back home and it never gets resolved.”

This October the Carpenters are returning to Te Hau Ora Ngāpuhi with their Dental Bus for follow up appointments, and the chance for more whānau to begin their transformation journey.

“We are in the community and because there are a lot of barriers and hurdles for whānau, we try to make access very easy. We’re online, on the phone, whatever works for whānau, wherever they are, we will come to them. Whānau Ora for me means that our whānau can reach us. We are people who get to know them, who they trust and who they can talk to. We take a lot of time to build that whanaungatanga because we know it’s important to them. They’re not after a quick fix, they want someone to walk with them on their journey, and we can do that. We have the staff, the capability and the capacity to do that.”

Finn Strickland has dreamed of being a pilot since he was a tamariki, an aspiration that will soon become his reality with the help of a scholarship from Rangitāmiro Whānau Ora partner, Papakura Marae.

“The first time I experienced that feeling of flying was on my 12th birthday when my nanny got me a flight on one of those little aircrafts and I just loved it. So, I began taking the relevant subjects at school like physics, maths and English. Once I passed those, I started to look seriously at the courses I needed to take to move towards aviation.

Becoming a commercial pilot in Aotearoa requires some challenging prerequisites, including 200 hours of flying experience, a tertiary qualification in aviation and some serious financial assistance. Fortunately for Finn, that’s where Whānau Ora came in.

“There are huge costs involved but the Whānau Ora scholarship covered the shortfall so I could start my studies and my journey to becoming a pilot. This is my third year and so far I have my private license and I’m working towards my commercial license. I have about 20 hours left to fly, and I already have booked it in so I should achieve that within the next few weeks. My goal is to fly around the world as a commercial pilot. Something that became more accessible because of Papakura Marae and Whānau Ora.”

At a time when some rangatahi are making headlines for the wrong reasons, Finn is encouraging his age group to reach out for the right support to start putting their aspirations in motion.

“Nothing is impossible. Before I even started wanting to be a pilot, I thought it was beyond my reach. But finding and receiving that financial help was huge and it happened because I started asking around to see who could support my goals and what I needed to do. Starting there is a good place because eventually you will find someone to help make it possible.”

“Whānau Ora is a valuable addition to a lot of other things we do here like our Hauora, our cultural renaissance, ahikatanga, our manaakitanga and our mana ora. Although it is one piece, Whānau Ora is an important piece, and we are very glad to be associated with Rangitāmiro and Whānau Ora enabling us to continue to be providers for our whānau.”

“I didn’t feel judged. I could be myself. In my mind I knew who I was in the past, but no one at BBM knew.”

In 2019 Ina Walters was scrolling through her Facebook feed when she saw a Buttabean Motivation (BBM) bootcamp ad that saved her life.

“At that time, I was trying to find myself and get fit. I had just gotten out of prison, so I was still on home detention, overweight, a full-on meth addict doing criminal activities to support my habit and I was an absent mum. The only time I was clean was when I was in prison and that’s when I knew this life wasn’t for me.”

Five years earlier BBM opened their new premises in Manukau City supporting whānau towards healthier, fitter lifestyles. Dave Latele’s organisation is purposefully run by people who have changed their own mindsets, taking themselves on personal journeys of self-discovery and aspirational living, exactly what Ina needed.

Her parole officer extended her freedom due to her good behaviour so Ina chose to prioritise her hauora.

“I was getting out of active addiction. You wouldn’t know I was that person back then if you were only meeting me now. I couldn’t afford the gym, so these free classes were life changing. I just showed up. I met Dave and Corinne and straight away, I felt like I was at home. I never stopped coming. I started with one session a week, then two, then three, four, five, six and then basically, I was living there because I turned up every day.”

The physical changes became visible as the weeks progressed, but mentally Ina noticed the difference immediately.

“I didn’t feel judged. I could be myself. In my mind I knew who I was in the past, but no one at BBM knew. They started calling me sis, they welcomed me and that impacted positively on my mental health and how I started seeing the world.”

Ina was used to living in an environment that enabled her drug and alcohol addiction. She had her first taste of alcohol while at primary school which led to consuming up to a gram of meth a day as an adult. Ina gave birth to her first son at 15 years old, and two more children followed. Her world spun out of control after her partner committed suicide, something she could never understand and so she turned to other vices as a coping mechanism.

“Today I know how to feel the fear and do it anyway. Back then I wasn’t taught that, nobody’s taught that, no one knows how to go through grief. I didn’t know how to live, I didn’t want to, but I had to for my children.”

Enveloped in the BBM Whānau Ora, Ina has rebuilt her life, strengthened her relationships with her children and solidified her own self-respect.

“I am proud of myself. I have had so many things to unpack and get out of my system over the years. It’s taken me a long time to be able to say that.”

Despite growing up poor in a family who relied on kai packs, Ina felt loved and is now fortunate to be in a position where she helps support whānau. 

“I started as a volunteer at the foodbank. I was actively looking for a job, but no one would hire me, so these guys put me on the payroll for the food share. I started running that, and then doing pre-employment programmes, and I even facilitated a health and wellbeing Level 1 and 2 programme. Currently I do all the back end mahi for the BBM app.”

Ina’s resilience and determination, alongside the support she has received at BBM have facilitated her transformation, tautoko she values deeply.

“Without BBM coming into my life I would probably be in jail, or dead. Every day I wake up and I am grateful for being introduced into this space, for giving me new life, and all the opportunities and blessings that continuously flow into my cup.” 

“This work, when you see all these different things, it’s cool, it’s amazing but, it’s because our people are in need. I wish we didn’t have to do it. However, I choose to do this and to help people. Success is when we don’t have to do this anymore.

I know that my outspokenness can hurt us, and we don’t get the funding we should because of it. But you must speak up, because there’s no point in having some sort of public profile if you don’t use it. There’s no way I can’t say these things. I’m not trying to be a radical, I’m just saying the things that are happening politically and the things that we are seeing in our communities.

This system is so full of bureau-crap, that’s what I call it, it stops people from helping people. We help no matter what, so many whānau just have their heads above water and we do what we can with what we have. We make it happen and I’m glad we’re here to help our people. Whānau Ora is family and helping one another. That’s what it is, no one is getting left behind. If someone is still going, we go back and we pick them up.”

“We have a lot of different whānau who are looking for a range of different support services. For us whānau Māori is our primary focus because they are the ones who are heavily impacted by negative statistics. So, we enhance our whānau especially from a Whānau Ora perspective, not as a single person-focus. We view hauora as a whānau focus and we position ourselves to engage with high to critical needs whānau in impossible to reach places throughout our community.

We amplify their wellbeing by looking at their situation from a Te Whare Tapa Whā framework and seeing what walls are lacking, and what walls need support, and being able to provide that for them from a tinana, hauora standpoint. We provide mental health services and we run events throughout the year for tamariki, mokopuna, tane and wahine to increase that social aspect for overall positive well being.”

“We are the largest iwi in Aotearoa with 175,000 – 185,000 registered whānau, and that means our services are not confined to boundaries at all. Our whānau can be transient, they move away for opportunities and although we have intensive programmes we deliver specifically in our rohe, there are others we have outreach to around the motu. We have 106 staff to deliver targeted support for whānau through their transformation of positive wellbeing that is sustainable and aspirational. It is a lot of mahi, but it is awesome mahi.”

“Our whānau whether they are red, black or white are welcome here at this marae. We have over 52 services here, Whānau Ora 2.0, Rangitāmiro is just one in our approach to support whānau. We are an urban marae, with whānau who have experienced extremes of hardship, of poverty, but we try to take them on a hikoi through unconditional support, manaakitanga, whanaungatanga and rangatiratanga. As a marae we are here to serve our community as best as we can. If we can’t support them with one of our 52 services, we seek it elsewhere with our partners, our funding organisations who support us, our philanthropists who back Papakura Marae. We always find a way to tautoko whānau.”

“Ultimately for us we’re a community, and if we can support whānau we do. The reality of working within your own community is that sometimes your own community doesn’t support you. That’s reality and we live with that. But I think that we’ve certainly done some key stuff across Ngāti Hauā and so transitioning into this phase of Whānau Ora with Rangitāmiro will bring opportunities that will strengthen our support for whānau here”.

“We actually have four papakainga here in Ngāti Rēhia. There is Takau, Teti, Matoa and Kerikeri Inlet. These are all Māori whānau that we will help. And we will help them. If they are whānau, they all whakapapa to us anyway, it doesn’t matter where they are from. Our role is to āwhina. That’s our role. Whether we do that in a way that actually looks after our whānau, and our Tamariki, that’s the kind of stuff we always do. We try to always support. Because it doesn’t matter if you do whatever you have to do, if we stick to our values we have as Māori, we’ll always be ok.”

“The current climate within the political arena is making it much harder and it’s pushing us backwards. So, between ourselves as partners and Rangitāmiro we are going to have to work hard to make a difference, to stay in the game. Whānau Ora is special, Whānau Ora is specific, and our Whānau Ora navigators are skilled people, and it begins with the lived experience of Māori. And it also sits in the space of our own stories, our own narratives, especially our lived experience in relation to where we have come from.”