Ā mātou kōrero

  They say that you cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if you have not dined well. There is a whakatauki that says, ‘I orea te tuatara ka patu ki waho’ which encourages us to apply creative thinking, adaptability…

  “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope”.  Maya Angelou The sunrise this morning was blazing in its beauty.   Astounding, awe-inspiring, bedazzling.   It reminded me that sometimes the simplicity…

  One of the most useful pieces of advice my mother gave me was ‘pick up a tea-towel’.   She’d say, “don’t wait to be asked, just make yourself useful”.   Her view was that it was better to be…

  Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to.” When you have a solid sense of place, an innate and intimate connection to your tribal landscape it can be defining…

  In 2004, Koukourarata legend, Dr Irihapeti Ramsden challenged the obsession with depicting Māori as ‘warriors’ or ‘toa’ by her now oft-quoted vision “Once were gardeners, once were astronomers, once were philosophers, once were lovers”. Many read her words as…

  The world is a bubble Our baby loves bubbles.   Bubbles in the bath; bubbles in the sink while you’re washing the dishes; bubbles in the air that float to heaven, carrying her dreams within them.   She loves…

  E iti noa ana nā te aroha  A small thing given with love. If ever we have seen love nurtured, love flourishing, it is through the context of the coronavirus virus in our lives.  All over the nation we…

  As the nation woke to Good Friday and the start of the Easter Stay-cation, I was heartened to read some of the comments on #Manaaki20.org around how we are all boosting whānau morale. Keren Tuirirangi re from Whanganui responded…

  The rising numbers on the map detailing the impact of COVID-19 in Aotearoa have been uppermost in our minds this week.   The messaging is clear: Protect your community – staying home breaks the chain, and stops the virus…

  At the end of the first 24 hours of our Manaaki survey having been out, we had received 294 responses representing over 1000 whānau members. One comment struck me with a simple respect that in many ways is remarkable…