Mahi Ngātahi - Collaboration Creates Change That Reaches Further
What happens when two kaupapa, both working towards healthier and safer communities, come together with a shared belief that change starts with our people?
Creating healthier, safer and more connected communities requires us to look beyond the work of individual organisations and understand how the different parts of a system connect. For Healthy Families East Cape, collaboration is one of the ways we do this.
Our systems approach asks us to look beyond individual choices and consider what is happening in the places where whānau live, learn, work and play. We work alongside our hapori and kaupapa partners to understand the conditions, relationships and systems that influence health and wellbeing, and to explore where there are opportunities to do things differently.
This means bringing different perspectives, experiences, relationships and ways of thinking together. It also means recognising that the people most affected by an issue are often best placed to lead change.
Complex issues rarely sit neatly within one sector or organisation. The factors that influence whether people can live healthy, safe and connected lives are shaped by many parts of our communities and systems. When these parts work in isolation, opportunities to create lasting change can be missed.
Collaboration creates a way to connect these parts. From a Healthy Families perspective, collaboration helps in connecting people and organisations that may otherwise work separately, sharing knowledge, building relationships, challenging how things have traditionally been done, and creating space for new ways of working.
Our relationship with Hikitia Tāne Ora is one example of what this can look like in practice. Hikitia Tāne Ora is working towards a thriving Tairāwhiti where tāne, whānau and hapori can live free from harm. As a community-led initiative focused on preventing sexual violence and restoring belonging for tāne and their whānau, their mahi brings a deep understanding of prevention, relationships and the realities experienced within our rohe. While Tāne Ora and Healthy Families approach change from different starting points, there are important places where our mahi intersects.
Working alongside Tāne Ora gives us an opportunity to learn from a kaupapa connected to tāne, whānau and our local community, while also creating space to share what we each see, know and experience. Together, we can ask different questions about prevention and consider how relationships, environments, systems and conditions influence the wellbeing of our communities.
This is where collaboration becomes part of systems change. When different parts of the system connect, we can see relationships and opportunities that may not be visible when working alone. We can share learning, challenge assumptions, test new ideas and identify where collective effort could shift the conditions that influence health and wellbeing.
For Healthy Families, our role is often to help make those connections by bringing people together, connecting across sectors and supporting collective action so that ideas, learning and local solutions can travel further.
The relationship between Healthy Families East Cape and Hikitia Tāne Ora reminds us that systems change takes hononga, trust, a willingness to listen, share what we know and be open to doing things differently.
When kaupapa connect across traditional boundaries, we create opportunities for influence that none of us could create alone. And that is where collaboration becomes a way of changing the system around our whānau, so our communities are better positioned to thrive.