Powering communities — sit down with community groups (pt. 2)

Each year, we use profits from the sale of .nz domain names to give out community funding. Community groups that receive our funding do amazing mahi to make a better Internet for Aotearoa.

It’s our privilege to support them, and over the last few years, we’ve been adapting our processes to be built around whakawhanaungatanga and manaakitanga.

We sat down with some of these groups to kōrero about their mahi. Given the depth of this kōrero, we have separated this into two blogs.

In part one: Powering communities — sit down with community groups (pt. 1), we talked about the response to their programmes and the importance of equity and creating pathways that enable opportunities.

In part two (this blog), we talk about the drive to support better outcomes for Māori and what the future holds.

We talked to: 

• Tony Laulu, Founder of Digital Discipline. 
• Jesse Armstrong, Founder + Kaihautū / Chief Executive Officer of Vaka.
• Shanon O'Connor, Director of Tōnui Collab Charitable Trust. 
• Hannah Simmonds, Pou Angitu for Ngā Kura a Iwi o Aotearoa. 

The programmes

Digital Discipline — educating about social media addiction

They’re on a mission to enhance people's digital wellbeing across New Zealand. They educate people about social media addiction to help them work towards a more balanced digital lifestyle.

Vaka —  an education package, focused on teaching 3D printing and entrepreneurship 

They empower everyday people with the knowledge and tools they need to navigate the oceans of STEAM* and entrepreneurship. One way is through 3D printing, which is one of the few technologies that bridges the digital and physical realm, sparking innovation and opening pathways for young minds. 

*Science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics

Tōnui Collab Charitable Trust — exploring STEMM 

They’re a specialist education partner dedicated to creating innovative reo rua/dual language STEMM learning opportunities for learners in Te Tairāwhiti. Rangatahi are invited to explore the diversity of STEMM — Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths, and Mātauranga Māori.

Ngā Kura a Iwi o Aotearoa — E-sports live streamed in Te Reo Māori

They advocate for the rights and aspirations of their iwi, whānau, kura, staff, and students by establishing and nurturing partnerships with tribal entities, government agencies, and the private sector to support the schools’ kaupapa and strategic priorities. Their recent event, Te Ahi Orokohanga 2024 was a collaborative Minecraft E-sports experience commentated and live-streamed in Te Reo Māori.

Approaches that see Māori thrive

During our kōrero, the group shared their approaches that see Māori thrive. 

Shanon from Tōnui Collab, spoke about making decisions for generations to come and coming from a strengths-based perspective rather than presenting a deficit case.

“We're making mokopuna decisions or we're making tīpuna decisions. We're making decisions today that we hope will change the landscape and, therefore, provide a greater world for our mokopuna to grow up in and our children’s children's children. What drives us is a deep-rooted commitment to equity and a solid belief in our inherent talents and our knowledge that we do have the skills to thrive.” — Shanon from Tōnui Collab

Disrupting the existing system to enable Māori to thrive was also on the mind of Jesse from Vaka.

“The students suffer. They don't get the opportunity to have creative freedom and the space to just create and make. As a result, they start to label themselves with things like “I'm not very smart because I don't get good exam results” Our long-term vision is to provide not only access to the tech but to provide the inspiration that the rangatahi need so we can free their creative potential. It's breaking those identity barriers and giving rangatahi the freedom to just make.” — Jesse, Vaka

For Ngā Kura a Iwi o Aotearoa, creating spaces that start from a Te Ao Māori way of thinking, including in terms of Te Reo, means enabling young people to be authentic and embrace learning without fear.

“For us, a big thing is claiming that space from a kaupapa Māori perspective. To create those contexts, like e-sports, that is grown and driven from a Te Ao Māori lens, it means the kids don’t have to try to morph themselves into something different to fit into the “mainstream” environment. At its core, fundamentally, it’s about the kids being able to show up as themselves. They don’t need to navigate unfamiliar territory, and all they need to do is explore the digital realm.” — Hannah, Ngā Kura a Iwi o Aotearoa

This resonated with Shanon from Tōnui Collab.

“We're not looking to purely deliver or create a bilingual offering, that's not enough. To create STEMM learning opportunities that can be delivered in Te Reo Māori, the design and development of our kaupapa, of everything that we do, is inherently Māori. From the inception of a kaupapa, we are thinking about how this continues the tikanga that our tīpuna have laid out before us and how rangatahi-Māori and whanau can feel validated, celebrated and recognised for the skills they already hold and carry.” — Shanon from Tōnui Collab

What the future holds

There has been a great response to the programmes within the community, and the sky is the limit for where they can go in the future. 

“The kids were just in awe, and at the end the adults were amazed at what the kids were able to achieve. It's like a gateway drug to the world of digital! It can spark innovation and creativity. It was a real celebration of the kids.” — Hannah, Ngā Kura a Iwi o Aotearoa

One challenge, perhaps unsurprisingly, is around stable funding. Chasing funding streams distracts from the work itself, so multi-year funding commitments, whether from government or philanthropics, would make a huge difference. 

“We have a long wish list. From a government point of view, we would love to receive ongoing funding. It’s not cheap. It’s one of the things we don’t want to be thinking about. It's different to focus on the work and also ensure enough money in the bank.” — Tony, Digital Discipline

Beyond that they all have big dreams.

Tony spoke of the importance of embedding digital wellbeing messaging within existing the online safety and cybersecurity curriculum, so that young people are continuously informed.

“For us, we’d love to make the tournament an annual thing. Honestly, we want to take over the e-sports tournaments and flip the paradigm so that there’s an annual national tournament in Te Reo Māori, and everyone can get involved but it’s from that worldview first. For now though we’re aiming to make what we do an annual thing. But it's unsustainable, it needs long-term funds and financial sustainability.” — Hannah, Ngā Kura a Iwi o Aotearoa

Jesse talked about the plans for Vaka to become financially self-sustaining by diversifying revenue streams, with a mixture of corporate sponsorships, their own commercial printing and e-commerce products. But it requires some stable support while they scale. They have big dreams and foresee the scale of impact they can have growing. 

“We're looking to grow this pretty big. Our first major goal is to get to 100 printers and the idea is that we have some of them set aside for making products and doing commercial printing. But then we have a good number of them set aside to give access to people who for example do a workshop with us and catch that entrepreneurial bug and then strike while the iron is hot. When they finish a programme with us, they have actually made money, and proved to themselves ‘I could do this.’” — Jesse, Vaka

InternetNZ | Ipurangi Aotearoa

Each year InternetNZ uses profits from the sale of .nz domain names to give out community funding. That means anyone who has a website ending in .nz, contributes to all the amazing positive public impact work that happens because of this funding. Find out more about this pūtea.