He oranga tamariki, he oranga whānau, he oranga tāngata

Imagine an Aotearoa New Zealand where all our children, young people and mokopuna flourish.

Imagine an Aotearoa New Zealand where all children and whānau flourish.  Where each and every childhood is full of opportunity.

This is not the reality for many thousands of children and young people today.  They and their families have become locked into poverty via rising housing costs and low wages. Many parents find themselves under-resourced and stressed.

The Peter McKenzie Project is a collective of initiatives tackling the root causes of child and whānau poverty in Aotearoa New Zealand. Read about them below.

About Us

Peter McKenzie

Peter McKenzie, a grandson of Sir John McKenzie, was instrumental in establishing and leading the Jayar Trust, which funds the Peter McKenzie Project. Peter wanted the fund to make a substantial difference to the lives of New Zealanders. He seeded the idea of spending all of the Trust’s funds on one area of focus over a period of up to 20 years.  Sadly, Peter died in 2012.  The project has been named in his honour.

Initiatives supported

Tokona te Raki

We are a Ngāi Tahu-led collaborative established to increase Māori participation, success and progression in education and employment outcomes.   Our goal is to achieve equity in education, employment and income for all Ngāi Tahu and Māori in the Ngāi Tahu takiwā by 2040. We want to tackle poverty and inequality by ensuring our rangatahi are supported into the jobs of the future to become the rock stars of our community. Our legacy will be a world where all Māori are inspired by their futures, confident in their culture, prosperous in their careers and succeeding as Māori.

He Toki ki te Rika is one example of how our mahi translates into practice
Influencing more Māori into trade training with a focus on wahine

He Toki ki te Rika is an initiative designed to support more Māori into trade training pathways and to scaffold higher level qualifications.  He Toki is one of the longest and most successful programmes within Tokona te Raki.  This To date He Toki has enabled over 1200 Māori to graduate in a trade or industry training qualification. This year He Toki has supported 210 students between the Ōtautahi and Ōtepoti campuses with a notable 32.3% increase in wāhine enrolments. (60 are Ngāi Tahu).  Of the total, 39 wahine are hoping to move into their professional qualifications in Bachelor of Nursing, Medical Imaging, Enrolled Nursing, and Nutrition. 

Te Ohu Whakawhanaunga – a New Zealand Alliance

Te Ohu Whakawhanaunga has been working since 2018 to grow a broad-based alliance in Auckland. The purpose of this now emerging alliance is to reduce child poverty by addressing the causes of poverty in families and communities, so the City of Auckland flourishes.

Te Ohu fosters active citizenship and civil society leaders who have the ability to negotiate with decision-makers toward systemic and structural change. Communities know what is wrong and what has to change. To address the way things currently work in Aotearoa will require a breadth of leadership from many organisations that gives voice to these issues, and disciplined organisation that ensures these voices are heeded.

The Alliance is bringing a community organising model to this challenge of growing community voice and power. This is a vision that gives hope after 30 years of failure through deficit models of social change - something new can emerge.

Work to date has been focused on:

• Laying the foundations through developing relationships and trust between and among organisations from within faith, unions & communities

• Growing the number of sponsoring organisations and members of the alliance

• Listening to communities and organisations to understand priority focus areas

• Developing leaders in the skill of community organising, including through two-day foundation training and five-day residential training programmes.

See Te Ohu Whakawhanaunga’s website here.

WhyOra: Empowering Māori career and employment aspirations so that our whānau can flourish

WhyOra works collaboratively to improve educational and employment outcomes so that our whānau can flourish. 

Our aim is to empower Māori rangatahi and whānau to fulfil their potential through upskilling and participation in education and the workforce at all levels.

Using a Māori values based, holistic approach we support our participants on pathways that work for them, connecting them with information, networks and opportunities.

With a strong track record in the Taranaki health and disabilities sector, we also work with education and other sectors, to grow the Māori workforce and address systemic inequities.

We work collaboratively to explore opportunities for innovation and systems change.

Our work helps to lift whānau incomes, empowering whānau to shift out of poverty towards the fulfilment of aspirations, contributing to the wellbeing of the whole community.

Now, with the impacts of Covid-19 on education and work, there is an even greater need for the connection and support that WhyOra provides.

In the current environment we are focusing on the “Ora” (wellbeing) of our WhyOra whānau, recognising that it is of primary importance to everyone’s career and life journey.

You can find out more about WhyOra at their website: www.whyora.co.nz

The Workshop: Improving lives by changing how we talk about complex issues

We want a world where everyone can live a good life. Changing how we talk about the big issues is one way we can create that future.

• When our communications inspire hope, people understand change is possible

• When our communications connect to what matters, people listen.

• When our communications offer better explanations, people’s decision-making deepens. 

• When our communications are motivating, people act.

The Workshop are public narrative researchers and advisors. We draw on many disciplines to understand how public narratives and mental models influence people's thinking. We identify how people explain complex issues. We use scientific methods to find narrative strategies that deepen people’s thinking about those issues. We use storytelling tools to upskill people with complex knowledge to craft effective communications. 

The Workshop’s role in the Peter McKenzie Project is to provide this research, support and advice to organisations working in the complex space of systems change. An example is The Workshop’s collaboration with Tokona te Raki to develop narratives and messages to communicate their work, including in the Kia Puta ki Rangiātea report. Dr Eruena Tarena, Kaihautū – Executive Director of Tokona te Raki explains:

'The Workshop has helped me, my team and our kaupapa find our voice over the past year. In a world of seemingly ever increasing complexity they helped us re-engage with our vision and values as a way to navigate complexity and find a clear pathway forward. They have deepened our understanding of the science of storytelling as well as holding our hand as we applied these learnings across a mix of formal research and other projects that just laid out our vision for a better future.'

You can find out more about The Workshop at their website: www.theworkshop.org.nz

Community Housing Aotearoa

Convened through Community Housing Aotearoa (CHA), The Shift Aotearoa creates a platform to discuss and understand what a well-functioning housing system means in Aotearoa, how it can be achieved, and what that looks like in real life.

The essential framework of The Shift Aotearoa operates across 3 significant fields: the international, in which we interrogate the role and correlation of UN jurisprudence in relation to Te Tiriti, and where we import, export, share, and modify understandings relating to The Shift and The Shift Aotearoa; the national, in which we develop a clear picture of the domestic social and policy structures involved in this kaupapa; and the cultural/local/community, where The Shift Aotearoa really starts and ends, and finds strength, inspiration, and relevance for New Zealanders.

CHA is the umbrella group, or peak body, for the community housing sector. Our members provide a wide range of homes throughout New Zealand in partnership with researchers, government agencies, councils, iwi, churches, developers, community groups and others. More information about CHA is available at communityhousing.org.nz

Our vision is for all New Zealanders to be well-housed. That means good, affordable, warm, safe homes in locations that enable individuals, whānau and communities to thrive; part of an inoculation against intergenerational poverty. As a country, we all benefit when people have a place to call home. Life becomes settled and less stressful, children are able to stay in school and people in their jobs, and families are able to get the social and health services they need.

Muaūpoko Tribal Authority (Taitoko/Levin) and FinCap: Te Pou Tūruapō - Project Driving Force

Poverty and hardship limit the potential and opportunities for affected whānau and families, and undermine the well-being of communities throughout Aotearoa. The Muaūpoko Tribal Authority and FinCap have formed a partnership to boost wellbeing at both community and national levels.

The Muaūpoko Tribal Authority (MTA), as the representative mandated organisation for the Muaūpoko iwi, recognises that as Tangata Whenua for Taitoko it has mana whenua and kaitiaki responsibilities for all who reside within its area.  It seeks to lead and facilitate a whole community effort around eradicating poverty by 2040.

The need for a strong child poverty lobby in Aotearoa, focussed on political lawmakers and public servants, has long been evident.  That is where FinCap working with Ngā Tangata Microfinance has a pivotal place in this project. The intention is to build and operate such a lobby, with advocacy and campaign strands. It will be more effective and authentic if it is fed by data, examples and voices from a real community working actively and strategically on issues of poverty.

 The unique mix of this project is local iwi leadership combined with national advocacy and campaigning.  The iwi seeks a greater role in directing its own future while supporting all who live within its rohe. Nationally the project is led by FinCap, working with its partner Ngā Tangata and involving in collaboration (some core, some issue by issue) a range of national players with specific and generic interests in poverty-related law reform.

ActionStation Aotearoa

Launched in July 2014, the ActionStation community now includes over 150,000 New Zealanders. Its mission is “to tautoko (support) and whakamana (uplift) everyday New Zealanders to act together in powerful and coordinated ways to create what we cannot achieve on our own: a society, economy and democracy that serves all of us - everyday people and Papatūānuku, the planet we love.”

ActionStation has developed a model of member-driven, digitally facilitated, multi-issue, values- and evidence-based grassroots campaigning. Its focus is to shift public opinion and drive the media agenda in order to influence political decisions so they are better for people and planet.

Noticing the surge of desire for a better society post-Covid, ActionStation has partnered with The Workshop, Tokona Te Raki and Whakaaro Factory to build the Campaign of Hope.  Starting with a jointly created vision for a system centred on caring for the earth and one another, they will design and deliver a campaign to generate widespread public support to shift the dominant economic narrative towards collective and whānau wellbeing.

It is clear that a new normal is needed which focuses on empowering local communities to work towards a sustainable future where children and whānau can lead healthy, happy lives. Without clear focus, strong collaboration, and a uniting vision, we risk going back to the systems we already have that are damaging the planet and people, especially Māori, Pasifika, disabled and low-income whānau. The time for change is now.

Uptempo

Uptempo is a four-year collective learning programme. It will partner with Pacific ‘aiga to explore how to progress in work and earn more money.

The programme will work with ‘aiga to help us, government and businesses deeply understand what it will take—at both a grassroots and systems level—to shift the dial and create long-lasting wealth for Pacific people.

The goal of the project is that Pacific families (‘aiga) direct and determine their own economic futures. In practice this means the gap between average Pacific People’s incomes and wealth and those of Non-Pacific will start to close, and home ownership rates for Pacific ‘aiga will start to rise.

Uptempo is a part of The Southern Initiative (TSI), a social innovation unit within Auckland Council. TSI is the programme lead and will bring Uptempo to life in south and west Auckland alongside ‘aiga, The Fono, Oceania Career Academy and First Union.

Uptempo’s work to date has focused on trialling recommendations from TSI, MBIE and the Auckland Co-design Lab’s Pacific People’s Workforce Challenge. The next phase of Uptempo’s work builds off this learning, bringing together innovation practice, evaluation methods and lived experience of Pacific People to lead a compelling and actionable case for systems change.

Uptempo is a partnership project, funded by MBIE and Peter McKenzie Project. Peter McKenzie Project funding is reserved for the most innovative elements of Uptempo, this will include  evidence-led prototypes (including peer-to-peer and cash transfer models) and ‘aiga-led prototypes—both will be co-designed with ‘aiga.

The Committee

Resources

Child poverty

Child poverty monitor: http://www.childpoverty.co.nz

Systems change

Systems Change – A Living Example

Gael Surgenor & Brenda Hayward

This article explores the current landscape of social and economic change, and how the status quo can’t provide the transformative change needed to address social issues at their roots. The article speaks about The Southern Initiative as an example of systems change in action.
https://www.jrmckenzie.org.nz/stories/systems-change-a-living-example/

What Exactly Do We Mean by Systems?

Dan Vexler 22June 2017 Stanford Innovation Review

This is a short article that discusses what exactly is meant when we talk about systems.
https://ssir.org/articles/entry/what_exactly_do_we_mean_by_systems

Systems change and how to do it

Rob Abercrombie, Ellen Harries and Rachel Wharton
June 2015 Lankelly Chase

This report aims to make sense of the literature, knowledge and learning about systems change to make it accessible. It is designed to be read by those who  want to embrace different ways of addressing societal challenges.
https://lankellychase.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Systems-Change-How-to-Do-It.pdf

The Water of Systems Change

John Kania, Mark Kramer, Peter Senge
May 2018 FSG

The Water of Systems Change aims to clarify what it means to shift conditions and offers an actionable model for funders and others interested in creating systems change, particularly those who are working to advance equity.
https://www.fsg.org/publications/water_of_systems_change

Systems Grantmaking Resource Guide

Co-created by Grantmakers for Effective Organizations and Management Assistance Group
February 2016, GEO

This resource guide aims to help the reader unpack a systems change approach so they can apply it to their work, providing a selection of the most used and relevant system assessment tools, frameworks and processes for grantmakers and the social sector.
http://systems.geofunders.org/systems-grantmaking

Contact

To find out more about the Peter McKenzie Project, contact the J R McKenzie Trust.