The aim of the Tiakina ō Tātou Tamariki project is to encourage neighbours to spend more time together helping to make our communities even safer, especially for children.
Tiakina ō Tātou Tamariki is a three year project of Te Ora Hou Aotearoa that has been funded by the JR McKenzie Trust and The Todd Foundation.
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The ultimate goal of the project is ‘Tiakina o tatou tamariki’, or ‘Keep our kids safe’.
Our related goal is that every parent and every child in our neighbourhoods will be confident that someone will notice and someone will care when they have cause for joy, sorrow or worry.
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Overview
Two neighbourhoods in Gisborne and Whanganui are being encouraged to find the resources within their community to enjoy safe homes and streets, healthy children and young and older people making a positive contribution to the wellbeing of their community. We expect the project to contribute to significant increases in:
- neighbourhood knowledge;
- neighbour interactions;
- neighbourly trust;
- volunteering; and
- care, concern & celebration.
The project is designed to build on existing community development work that has been happening in the neighbourhoods for the past 10 years and the process goals that help create the desired outcome include:
- To help neighbours reflect on ways to ensure that residents (and visitors) in their street are safe and confident to support each other in ways that promote positive change in the neighbourhood.
- To mobilise volunteers to strengthen bonding and build social capital in the neighbourhood.
- To create knowledge within the neighbourhood about the place and the people who live there (i.e. its local history, current situation for residents/environment, and future plans).
- To learn from the project and make recommendations on neighbourhood policy and investment to local and central government and non-governmental organisations.
The project includes a number of mechanisms for measuring these indicators including data from statutory agencies and surveys of residents and key stakeholders (refer to Monitoring & Evaluation section).
Approach & Underlying Principles
The approach is based on the simple goal to ‘Keep Kids Safe’ and a four stage development process:
1) Spreading the word to raise awareness about the nature of the issues facing the community (e.g. family violence, street violence, child abuse and neglect, youth offending, etc.);
2. Mobilising the community to become engaged in developing and implementing plans to address the priority issue/s (e.g. to keep children safe);
3. Increasing the resources for families to obtain nonstigmatising help whenever and wherever they need it (e.g. recruiting volunteers who will take an active interest in the wellbeing of a family with young children);
4. Institutionalising the provision of resources so that support is sustained over the long-term.
Principles
The project is based on ten principles that have been adapted from the Strong Communities principles to better suit our context in Aotearoa:
1. Activities used to engage the community should be related to strengthening positive relationships in the neighbourhood and the ultimate outcome of keeping children safe and cared for. An activity “fits” if it naturally brings people together so that connections among families are enhanced and isolation is reduced.
2. Plans and approaches should be directed toward the transformation of community norms and structures so that residents “naturally” notice and respond to the needs of children and their caregivers.
3. Activities should continuously promote the core kaupapa. The objective is not to provide programmes or services but instead the continuous creation of settings in which the core messages of the project are heard and applied.
4. Available resources should be directed toward volunteer recruitment, mobilisation, and retention.
5. Activities should be directed toward the establishment or strengthening of relationships among families or between families and community institutions.
6. Activities should include a focus on the development of widely available, easily accessible, and non-stigmatising social and material support for families of young children.
7. Although the ultimate goal is the safety and care of children, project activities will mainly involve parents and extended whānau.
8. Activities should be undertaken in a way that enhances parent leadership and sustainable community engagement.
9. Whenever possible, activities should facilitate manaakitanga and reciprocity of help.
10. Activities should be designed so that they build or rely on the assets (leadership, networks, facilities and cultures) of the community.
Whānau Capacity Building
The six whānau capacities the project is interested in strengthening are:
- Manaakitanga (the capacity to care);
- Pupuri Taonga (capacity for guardianship);
- Whakamana (capacity to empower whānau);
- Whakatakato Tikanga (capacity for planning);
- Whakapumau Tikanga (capacity to transmit culture, knowledge, values);
- Whakawhānaungatanga (capacity for reaching consensus).
