Activity: What are our hopes and dreams for our community?
Develop a shared vision for a thriving community.
Identifying values
In te ao Māori, our hauora, or wellbeing, is about the collective, not the individual. There are many, many whakataukī that reflect this perspective. Divide ākonga into small groups, ask them to explore one of the whakataukī below, and/or any local whakataukī you know, to find out:
which iwi the whakataukī comes from
the meaning behind it
the message this whakataukī has about the importance of community, collaboration, and connection.
| Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari kē he toa takitini |
| He rau ringa e oti ai |
| Waiho i te toipoto, kaua i te toiroa |
| He waka eke noa |
| Mā mua ka kite a muri, mā muri ka ora a mua |
| Nāu te rourou, nāku te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi |
| Mā whero, mā pango ka oti ai te mahi |
Ākonga may also want to learn the following simple kaikōhau of hope in te reo Māori for Mānawatia a Matariki:
Collect and analyse perspectives
Ask ākonga to talk with loved ones about their hopes and dreams for the local community, neighbourhood, or the local environment. So that it is easy to collate responses, you may want to create a simple Google Survey with ākonga, in which they could ask such questions as:
What do you already love about this neighbourhood, community, or local environment?
What three words would you use to describe the street you live on? Do you like the words you have chosen – what would you change and why?
What would this neighbourhood, community, or local environment look like if it was as beautiful and vibrant as possible?
How happy do you think te taiao is around us?
In what ways is Papatūānuku thriving?
Collate the responses, by organising answers into groups of similar ideas. What themes have come to the top in this process?
Imagine our thriving future
Ask ākonga to write a pledge for the coming year or a letter to themselves. What do they wish for, and how could their actions respond to the community’s aspirations?
This process could evolve in many directions, depending on the outcomes of the process, for example ākonga could:
develop a poem around their dreams and wishes for the place they live
curate a collage moodboard of the future state they hope for
organise a meeting with local councillors
get involved in a local environmental group to help restore te taiao
be present and in service to the local marae.