New organisation to help struggling whānau post Covid-19
Thursday, 16 July 2020
A new organisation is making sure whānau doing it tough post-covid are staying warm and fed this winter.
The organisation, called Te Pātaka Inc, grew out of a Te Tauihu eight-iwi wide response to the Covid-19 lockdown, which received $100,000 in funding from Te Puni Kōkiri Ministry of Māori Development.
The eight iwi of Te Tauihu set up a “manaaki-a-iwi” response with Civil Defence across Marlborough, Nelson and Tasman to support Māori in the region.
This response provided more than 400 kai packages and 75 loads of firewood, but Te Pātaka coordinator Joshua Joseph (Ngāti Rarua, Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Maniapoto) said the tail-end of Covid was “lingering”, and whānau still needed support.
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Te Pātaka has been operating in Wairau (the Marlborough region) for three weeks already as one of three pilots for the NZ Food Network. In that time 60 whānau were referred to Te Pātaka.
Joseph said there were “many layers” to the issues that families faced during and after the Covid lockdown.
“For whānau that experienced job losses, the subsidy just doesn’t cut it for some people … MSD [the Ministry of Social Development] requires people to attend budgeting classes, but you can’t budget $585.80 when you're used to getting $1,500.”
Te Pātaka supplies community organisations with kai packages to feed a whānau of five for five days, including meat and bread donations from the NZ Food Network.
Its support work will now be expanding to include Whakatū Marae in Nelson and Te Āwhina Marae in Motueka as distribution centres. Joseph said he expected the need in the Nelson and Tasman area to be higher than it had been in Marlborough so far.
“We don't see this as a long-term project; what we're trying to achieve is helping families by giving them space to breathe.”
Joseph said many whānau struggling had lost incomes over the Covid-19 lockdown, and he said many people were waiting “with bated-breath” for the wage subsidy to finish and the fallout from the lockdown to clear.
“We are expecting a surge in jobs being lost,” he said.
“Covid has illuminated the issues in our society and those whānau who were already struggling.
“Our mandate is that no whānau go hungry and this was backed by the iwi chairs. Our ongoing vision is ‘ka ora ai te iwi’ as it reflects us sustaining our people. It’s just not good enough that children in our community are going hungry, regardless of what the reasons are.”
He said one positive of the emergency situations that had affected the top of the South Island was the strong relationship that had developed between Civil Defence and Māori.
“We have had earthquakes, fires and the pandemic. With each situation we’ve had to work out our response together, and we will be ready for our whānau Māori whenever the next thing comes.”
The iwi of Te Tauihu are Ngāti Apa ki te Rā Tō, Te Ātiawa o te Waka-ā-Māui, Ngāti Koata, Ngāti Kuia, Ngāti Rārua, Rangitāne o Wairau, Ngāti Tama, and Ngāti Toa Rangatira ki Wairau.