Quitliners to cut through the smoke at Te Kōnohete

Quitliners to cut through the smoke at Te Kōnohete

A team of Quitline Advisors will be heralding a non-smoking message with waiata, haka, and free nicotine patches at this week’s annual Te Kōnohete concert.

Staff from the free helpline will be taking part in the musical event at Wellington High School on Friday 6 November, which features 400 performers from several government agencies. But as well as taking part, they will also be available for advice and support to anyone there considering quitting smoking.

Paula Snowden, Chief Executive of The Quit Group, providers of Quitline, said: “Events like Te Kōnohete are a great opportunity to celebrate life and culture. Waiata and haka are part of our Māori heritage, smoking isn’t. It’s become embedded though and we want to help change that.

“At Quit we go beyond promoting healthy life styles. Our work is about helping people take action so we asked the organizers, can we provide quit smoking support for participants and whanau at this event? The response was a unanimous ae/yes.”

The event features performers from 14 agencies including the Police, the NZ Defence Force and the Ministry of Social Development.

This year Te Kōnohete 2009 is hosted by Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga (Ministry of Education). Te Kōnohete (an end of year celebratory waiata concert) was first held five years ago by the Ministry of Justice.

Since the first Te Kōnohete the Ministry of Justice has extended the invitation to ‘participate and perform in the concert’ to other public sector agencies, promoting and celebrating waiata, reo, and tikanga Māori on a wider scale and building inter agency whanaungatanga.

The Quitline team will perform two waiata and a Haka, all written by members of the organisation and themed around quitting smoking.

ENDS

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