Tū Māia 2025 - Mataatua Expectations

Paora Bedford: My name is Paora Bedford. I'm from Te Arawa. I'm a youth worker at Te Maioha o Te Parekarangi. Yeah, my job's pretty intense, but I enjoy it. There's a lot of challenges. I work with young men from 13 to 16.

Paora Beford: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But it's good for diving for your breathing 

Jeslyn Edacheril: At Oranga Tamariki I work as workplace admin. In my role, I work with various stakeholders in terms of tamariki and the caregivers, social workers and the vendors. It's a it's a very interesting role. Every day is different. Each day I get new challenges. Do you do you have a bilingual or multilingual household? Yes, yes.

Scott Johns: I ended up in Oranga Tamariki because I started a job working at the port of Tauranga as a wharfie and I must have had social worker printed on my forehead because everyone at lunchtime used to tell me their problems.  

Sarah Andrews: One of my colleagues, she had signed up for Tū Māia, she quite, she didn't quite know what she was getting herself in for either. She just said I'm on this journey and I want to learn about my how we can introduce cultural practices into our workspace and I'm just gonna go for it. And then she said you should join up too. And I kind of went oh, nah, that's not kind of my thing. It's all good. Got enough on my plate as it is with all my mahi I have to do.

Paora Bedford: I’m a hands on man I've always worked with my hands. I'm ex-military, being in the classrooms, a space that I'm not often in. I actually spoke to my rangatahi about it. I always encourage them to try and at least have a go, give it a go. And one of my boys said, bro, you're telling us to to give these activities a go and you don't want to go on the course and it was a reality check for me. And he basically told me I needed to step up. But I also got a good encouragement from from my management. They've been really cool.  

Nikki Bathe-Taylor - I think it's about just learning who the people are that you're going to be walking this journey beside, the connection to people, the understanding of where we come from, the different contexts, and how we can put this into what we do to make that connection even stronger in our mahi.  

Scott Johns: I'm already looking forward to the activities to come in the, in the we do 3 wānangas, 3 nohos that will be here. My reservation coming in was that it might affect my workload because I have a obviously workload and it's on top of the workload. But I just think it's so worth it that you always make time for things that are that you believe in and that you're that you're interested in. So. 

Jeslyn Edacheril: I look forward for the learning as I, as I mentioned, in terms to understand it in a deeper context, how it is done and how I can integrate that with my daily work, daily requirements at my employment at Oranga Tamariki.  

Paora Bedford: But this is my journey. I think this is the start of my journey. I've always wanted to do te reo properly. I think this is it. I think I've found my pathway now. This is it.

Nikki Bathe-Taylor - We're already at this place in the first day and a half and it feels this comfortable. And 
I'm looking forward to maybe having some of the discomfort, those challenging conversations.  

Sarah Andrews: Yeah, I, I'm quite excited to see what the next one brings. And, and heading forwards, like when I came here, I was very nervous because I wasn't, you know, I wasn't sure what we were coming into. And I leave here feeling like my cup is half full rather than half empty. You know, get ready for the next one.