For the third year running, Tapuwae Roa has awarded $60,000 to empower rangatahi and promote kaupapa-Māori initiatives as part of their annual funding.

This year's Tukuoha funding round featured the return of two significant grants: the Pou Herenga Tangata Award, dedicated to supporting rangatahi aspiring to community leadership, and the Tonganui Scholarship, designed to advance tikanga Māori, mātauranga tuku iho, and Te Ao Māori in the oceans sector.

One of six Pou Herenga Tangata Award recipients are bilingual STEMM educators, Tōnui Collab who plan to establish a rangatahi-led Recycle a Device (RAD) Club in Te Tairāwhiti to reduce the impact of the digital divide prevalent in their community.

"RAD is an initiative that enables young people to refurbish laptops (donated by organisations across the country) and once refurbished, koha these laptops to those in the community who need one," says Shanon O'Connor (Ngāti Porou, Ngāi Tahu), Founder and Director of Tōnui Collab.

"This funding contribution will enable a group of rangatahi from local kura Māori in Te Tairāwhiti to come together to work on this kaupapa, developing new skills while creating digital equity for our whānau and hāpori."

Jahvaya Wheki (Ngāti Hauā) is another successful Pou Herenga Tangata awardee who plans to utilise the funding to redesign Hamilton’s Coat of Arms and bring redress to the design process that excluded tāngata whenua in 1946.

"Our city's coat of arms was introduced at that time through a competition. Its symbolism represents a painful time for my people and lacks any inclusion from the multitude of diversities within our community. It has been more than 75 years and yet it is still there," says Wheki.

"We are all so deeply grateful for this funding because it now means we have a starting point in which the practice of equity, change, and representation can occur, through something small like an emblem."

Tonganui Scholarship recipient, Jeremy Padgett (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Rangitāne) plans to utilise his scholarship to support an upcoming fishing and diving wānanga for men’s health and wellbeing programme, Children of the Sea.

"Our kaupapa hosts 25 tāne from all different rohe around Aotearoa and teaches te ao Māori, manaakitanga, whanaungatanga and kotahitanga," says Padgett.

"This opportunity has enabled us to really get behind our kaupapa and make this journey through te taiao more accessible to our people and our rangatahi."

The trust’s annual Tukuoha funding round is a cornerstone feature of Tapuwae Roa’s rich legacy of supporting impactful Māori initiatives through funding and investment, including the recently launched Māori governance training programme, He Tukutuku Koiora that saw over 100 applicants apply.

In addition to receiving the funding, successful recipients of Tapuwae Roa’s Tukuoha funding round are officially recognised as members of Ngā Auahitūroa, the Trust's growing alumni network of over 300 passionate and diverse funding recipients.

To learn more about projects funded through the Pou Herenga Tangata Award and the Tonganui Scholarship in 2023, visit: https://www.tapuwaeroa.org/funding/nga-auahituroa/

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