What hasn’t worked, or at least not yet

Along the way, some things haven’t yet resulted in what we hoped for.

• Engagement with government decision-makers.

  Many of ngā Kaikōkiri were keen to increase engagement and influence.  Some of our attempts have failed to create much in the way of lasting relationships or influence. The 2018 Weaving our Strengths hui was widely seen as successful, and strengthened relationships with some key government agencies, but was also a one-off event.  The series of discussion groups for Members of Parliament (there’s a voice note in the time line - 2019) was cut short by Covid before establishing an ongoing impetus.  We have learned that finding or creating one-off opportunities needs to be matched by tenacity.  We possibly didn’t invest enough time and resource in this in this in earlier years, and more recently we have brought in more expertise, which has been appreciated by many Kaikōkiri.

• Looking for a role in improving the finance system.

  What could be termed the “finance system” – banks and other lenders, insurance, etc – clearly works better for some in society than for others.  As someone said, we would be horrified if any household in Aotearoa did not have access to clean water; we should also be concerned that many citizens and families do not have access to safe credit, or even a bank account – almost essential for building family prosperity..

  Some efforts to improve the situation from outside the established system, such as microfinance, are clearly hugely valuable to their clients; but they don’t operate at a scale to reach thousands of others who might benefit.Our good friends at FinCap work to improve aspects of the finance system every day, as do other groups and many people within the finance sector.  PMP spent some time meeting people inside the finance system, exploring ways that we might be able to fuel greater, perhaps more collaborative work in this area; but didn’t land on anything. Yet.

• Engaging first-hand experience of poverty.

  In earlier years there were a number of discussions about ensuring that some people with personal experience of hardship/poverty were contributing to the committee discussions. We thought that first-hand experience would add insight, solutions and authentic direction to our efforts.As it turned out, some Committee members have had their own and/or family experience of hardship, but it’s fair to say that personal experience would be historic rather than current.  How this has affected the direction of the project is hard to say.We’ve also looked to ngā Kaikōkiri to weave in “experience experts” to their mahi; this is much easier for some than others, depending on the nature of their work – some make this a priority and do a wonderful job.  However, if it’s less of a priority, it is often challenging to do in an authentic way. We need to remain open and creative, and learn from those with experience and expertise.

Article by Iain Hines, PMP Director until 2022