Resources | Case Study

These days Moerewa is a unique Contemporary Māori experience. Moerewa is a town that is 90 percent Māori and around 10 years ago, went through a real hard time. The community suffered, like many rural communities all around the world, from restructuring and loss of rural services. Moerewa is emerging from the shadows of the past into the light. The community is celebrating their beauty, their diversity and their enterprise as "21st century Māori", and with their new lease on life, the people are taking up the challenge to create an exciting future for their tamaiti and rangatahi.   In the late 1990s, the World Health Organisation (WHO) released a paper advocating the Community Development approach to solving social dysfunction in communities. The key to Community Development is a bottom up type of approach. The community needs to be ready for change, wanting change and able to make the changes that are required to create a happy, healthy living space

These days Moerewa is a unique Contemporary Māori experience.

Moerewa is a town that is 90 percent Māori and around 10 years ago, went through a real hard time. The community suffered, like many rural communities all around the world, from restructuring and loss of rural services.

Moerewa is emerging from the shadows of the past into the light. The community is celebrating their beauty, their diversity and their enterprise as "21st century Māori", and with their new lease on life, the people are taking up the challenge to create an exciting future for their tamaiti and rangatahi.

In the late 1990s, the World Health Organisation (WHO) released a paper advocating the Community Development approach to solving social dysfunction in communities.

The key to Community Development is a bottom up type of approach. The community needs to be ready for change, wanting change and able to make the changes that are required to create a happy, healthy living space. The partners' and key stakeholders' role is to support the endeavours of the community; so a right person, right time, right place scenario is essential to the success of the project.

ALAC (the Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand) saw the potential for the Community Development model to effect positive change in communities and started looking for a community that could make the model work.

He Iwi Kotahi Tātou Trust, the trust that had been formed to assist Moerewa to grow positively, also saw the potential of the Community Development model. In fact, key people in the Moerewa community and the trust had already begun to work in the Community Development framework - and their work was starting to effect change in the behaviour and attitudes of the townspeople. The community had started to take back their control and build up the esteem within the community.

Moerewa was ready, willing and able. But it was slow going, and the struggle to fit into the policies and formalities that go with creating a society were still disempowering the town.

He Iwi Kotahi Tātou Trust started looking for an alliance with an organisation, or several organisations, where the community would still have the control and the last say in the town's development, but where they could turn for moral support and financial assistance to continue to improve their living conditions in Moerewa.

This is where ALAC became involved in the development and vision of Moerewa.

The harm from alcohol and drug misuse was considered a key symptom of the disempowerment of Moerewa. And so when the key people in ALAC and He Iwi Kotahi Tātou Trust put their heads together, they began to plan a strategy where ALAC could support the community to reduce the alcohol related harm in the community.

The alliance between ALAC and He Iwi Kotahi Tātou Trust has been key in the development of Moerewa since 1998. ALAC's support was financial and moral. The Trust committed to reporting developments back to ALAC on a six monthly and annual basis.

The community worked on specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely goals that assisted in creating a healthy, happy, safe environment for the townspeople.

They decided to focus on addressing the broader environmental issues that led to the harm in the first place.

And so the town was beautified.
A place where kids could skateboard was built.
Public loos were opened.
Public celebrations were held.
The townspeople began to get creative in making income, keeping busy and building self-worth.

These are all things that the community wanted to see happen, and the effect of this has been a reduction in the harm caused by alcohol and drugs. More positive people are living in Moerewa these days, and the self-esteem is growing. Dis-empowerment is starting to become a thing of the past.

Moerewa is an icon in the Contemporary Māori world. It is a living demonstration that communities, particularly Māori communities, can use as a model to effect behaviour change in their own communities and that Māori can make a difference to themselves, for themselves.

The results of the alliance between a community making its own choices, and being supported from Crown Entities / Government Departments has been a resounding success.

Check out the Moerewa website