The road to Waiwhetū

Author: Yvonne Trask

On September 15 the Gift Trust team, and two of our trustees, spent the day at Waiwhetū marae, in Lower Hutt. And what a day it was!

The visit was arranged by Philanthropy New Zealand’s Wellington funders’ network and around 50 funders gathered at the marae for a warm welcome and pōwhiri. 

Waiwhetū is the busiest of Te Āti Awa marae in the Wellington region with a medical clinic, kohanga reo, radio station, Covid vaccination and testing clinic, advocacy service, restorative justice programme, rangatahi programme, sports and fitness centre, food parcel service, driver licensing programme, housing assistance, employment support and a commercial kitchen that makes what I believe to be the best scones with cream and jam on earth. 

After the pōwhiri and scones (yes, I can’t seem to help mentioning them again) four of the organisations based at the marae walked us through the work they do and their plans for the years ahead. It was inspiring and, from a funders’ point of view, intriguing. Here’s a bit of history:

Some donors ask The Gift Trust to provide research into potential charitable causes that meet their philanthropic interests. We always try to seek out a broad variety of organisations that represent all parts of that sector, but in the past it has often been hard to find kaupapa Māori groups to include.  Our Board took a decision at the end of 2021, to make sure we include, wherever possible, kaupapa Māori organisations in our research for donors. While research for our donors involves quite a bit of detective work and discussions with colleagues around the country and, at times, across the world, finding kaupapa Māori organisations can be even harder to find than Pākeha ones. 

Traditionally, many donors haven’t funded kaupapa Māori organisations for a variety of reasons, including that they don’t know about these groups and don’t have connections to them. Mercifully, the philanthropic sector is now undergoing a slow but substantial change. Funders are engaging with their mana whenua, the people of the land on which their trust is based, they are learning more about their history and about Māori processes and tikanga.

So, now The Gift Trust, along with so many other funders in Aotearoa New Zealand, are on the lookout for great organisations, run by Māori, for Māori, who could achieve so much more if they had more funding. And that’s where our visit to Waiwhetū comes in. 

We heard presentations from the medical centre, the radio station, the youth programme and the housing initiative and they were all exciting, inspirational projects that so many of us would like to support. We’ll be including these organisations in our thoughts when conducting philanthropic research for our donors in the months ahead. 

So, there you go! As donors with The Gift Trust you are now a part of something exciting, new and well and truly overdue. If you would like to hear more about the work happening at Waiwhetū and around the lands of Te Āti Awa, just drop the team a line. If you’d like to learn more about Te Āti Awa, our local iwi and their remarkable history (sneak preview: their stand at Parihaka was the passive resistance movement that pre-dated and apparently inspired Mahatma Gandhi!) feel free to ask us for some links to read up on.

Photo credit: Stuartyeates / CC-BY-SA-3.0