Healthy Families Rotorua’s year was marked by two distinctive phases: zoning in on our impact strategy for the first six months, followed by building team capability over the next six months.
Manager, Jenny Kaka-Scott, says a highlight of 2023 was working across every key focus area of the Healthy Families NZ contract.
“This year was the first time we’ve been able to do this because we had a full team. From smoking and alcohol prevention; to the built environment, active transport and mental health resilience; from Kai to Wai – we were across all of them and found innovative ways of creating change to improve people’s health and wellbeing,” says Jenny.
In 2022, our team collaborated with Kai Rotorua to ensure the cultivation and harvesting of kūmara at Te Puea Orchard for community Matariki ceremonies. This involvement extended into the current year, where our team actively contributed to the revival of an ana kūmara, a traditional storage pit, for housing the produce, including two ancient kūmara varieties.
“The Matariki celebration was one of the biggest highlights of 2023, marked by the successful revitalisation of the ana kūmara and the collaboration with Te Puia as the host for this year’s umu kohukohu whetū. This partnership followed our successful delivery of last year’s inaugural community ceremony.
“While Rotorua also hosted the national Matariki event, the community gathering at Te Puia drew a large audience and was a total success, contributing to the broader objective of revitalising mātauranga Māori for improved health outcomes,” says Jenny.
She says the team’s focus on building strong ecosystems has enabled many of the initiatives to successfully transition back into the hands of the community.
“While we continue to monitor and be involved from a distance, we’ve created opportunities for community champions and experts to input their knowledge and experience into our initiatives and form direct relationships with the community. We don’t need to facilitate the relationships as they’re not our relationships to hold on to,” says Jenny.
In the second half of the year, the team refocused on building capability around systems tools and systems thinking and working collaboratively.
“Kai has become a huge issue everywhere, not just in our town. So, we used the context of kai to underpin our learning. Everybody should have a good understanding of what happens in that space because we all buy food and we all eat. Having completed the second phase, where we engaged with tools, applied them, and enhanced collaboration within our team, we’ve transitioned to a unified project where everyone contributes.
“2023 was about executing our impact strategy, building individual capability within the team, and fostering collaborative teamwork. Now, armed with enhanced knowledge and a more cohesive approach, we’re looking forward to elevating our efforts in the upcoming year,” says Jenny.
