Helping Maori get more active
Being a kaiwhakahaere
With 20 already working hard throughout the country and more on their way, kaiwhakahaere are playing a big role as part of He Oranga Poutama, SPARC's national programme to promote physical activity in the Maori community.
What's it like?
Jack Thatcher is a kaiwhakahaere based at Sport Bay of Plenty in Tauranga. The key function, he says, is to make sure Maori issues are kept to the fore. "Someone has be out there pushing, and that's the job of the kaiwhakahaere."
That said, each kaiwhakahaere approaches the job differently. "Every one us has skills in different areas so the flavour of my programme wouldn't be same Auckland or Waikato, " he says. "It depends where our skills knowledge lie, in terms of how we network within community, and what the communities themselves want".
Jack says that in some areas kaiwhakahaere promote activities provided by local sports trusts while in others it's more traditional marae-based. "We link in with the things they're doing," he says. "Programmes like waka, hikoi, rangitahi for the youth and kaumatua programmes, that's based around keeping them fit and working in with the health providers."
Jack says Maori youth present a special problem. "Even though there's a lot of involvement in structured sport, a high percentage of Maori youth are inactive," he says. "They're the ones who do things like skateboarding, it keeps them active, but creating structured programmes for them doesn't always work. So that's one of our big issues."
Another is resource development. The sports trusts have a lot of good resources to offer the general public, Jack says, but there's not much written in te reo, which disadvantages organisations like kura kaupapa and kohanga reo. "Those areas miss out because they tend not to involve themselves if the resources aren't in te reo," he says. "So that's another big issue we're pushing."
Updated | 15 Jan 2007.
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