At our 2022 AGM, Helmut Modlik, CEO of Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira, outlined a vision for Porirua and an initiative in community-led governance that were inspiringly democratic, would give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and adapt principles and practices from Pacific, Māori and deliberative democracy. At a time when democracy is facing big challenges in New Zealand and internationally, we think that the Porirua Assembly on Climate, held earlier in 2025, is a twinkle of hope that needs to be shared. So we organised the ‘A Place of Firsts’ event to close the loop and find out about how the experiment had played out so far.
The event was held at Victoria University of Wellington on 4 December 2025. We have split the video recording into four parts, based on different themes in the panel discussion and questions from the audience. Transcripts are also provided. Trust Democracy would like to acknowledge our members who volunteered their time to make the videos and review and lightly edit the transcripts.
On this page you can:
- Read about the innovations made by the Porirua Assembly on Climate
- Learn about the speakers at our event
- Read the advice from speakers to others considering a citizens assembly
- Watch the videos
- Read the transcripts
- Follow links to further information
A Place of Firsts: The innovations
Porirua is known for community-led innovations in governance and delivery, and the Porirua Assembly on Climate continued this tradition. The Assembly was:
- the first climate assembly in New Zealand
- the first assembly co-designed and organised by an iwi authority and a community group
- the first assembly process designed to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi by using a quadcameral design
- the first New Zealand assembly to include children and young people
- governed by a new local governance body – the Porirua Community Leaders Forum – that sponsored the Assembly, holds its recommendations and can instigate ongoing community dialogue on local issues.
About the Speakers
Emily Beausoleil is an Associate Professor at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington. Her research as a political theorist centres on the dynamics, conditions and challenges of democratic engagement in diverse societies. She conducted an independent evaluation of the Porirua Assembly process.
Cally O’Neill was a participatory designer of community spaces until 2019 when she shifted her focus towards advocating for Te Tiriti-based deliberative democracy to address the climate and other contemporary crises. She is a founding member of Te Reo O Ngā Tāngata/The People Speak and was one of the Porirua Assembly facilitators.
Makerita Makapelu is a Team Leader for Wesley Community Action in Porirua with a background in performing arts and youth work. She specialises in community-led development and grassroots systems change, and was one of the Porirua Assembly facilitators.
Orini Rokx-Taratu and Santino Morehu are members of Future Unity, a youth climate group that formed during the Assembly process.
Jodi Watene is a Systems Change Lead at Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira Incorporated, was the project manager for the Porirua Assembly and is helping to establish a New Zealand Community of Practice on Indigenous Citizens’ Assemblies, unfortunately was unable to participate on the panel on the day.
Advice to others
The following quotes encapsulate some advice to anyone interested in adapting deliberative democracy processes for the New Zealand context in ways that honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi and support community-led governance.
“What do your local mana whenua think? Talk to them! That’s always my advice. It always puts people right back. And they thought they had already got an idea or whatever but it’s the only advice that you could really give because it’s local context.” – Cally
“The way that an idea is brought around when there’s conversation and there’s food and there’s time – makes a real difference to it. And relationships, all that soft data that’s so important to us humans – that cannot be replaced. So building a safe relational space for people to feel free to speak and say their mind, speak their mind, is really important. I think everything else will come from that.” – Makerita
“A community group, a mana whenua group and a rangatahi group, all having their own wananga but then coming together and coming up with recommendations as a collective. That’s how you’ll get authentic rangatahi voice if you really care about what young people are caring about at this time and about climate.” – Orini
“Keep it not simple, but keep it understandable! Because for rangatahi especially, a big barrier is actually feeling you don’t know anything … So by making the kaupapa easy to approach, it makes it easier for rangatahi to come forward to the table and provide their whakaaro.” -Santino
“How can we build and use this? … When you think in a strength-based way, it means that you focus on what you want to build. If you focus on the things that you want to build, it will grow.” – Makerita
The Videos
Context for ‘A Place of Firsts’ was provided by showing this 5-minute video about the Porirua Assembly on Climate at the start of the event.
| Part 1: Innovative design to reflect NZ’s founding Treaty and the local community |
| Part 2: Rangatahi process and youth leadership [#Part2vid] |
| Part 3: Community stream, participant treaty, facilitation, recruitment |
| Part 4: Reflections, learning, and what’s next |
Part 1: Innovative design to reflect NZ’s founding Treaty and the local community
Part 1 focuses on the distinctive design choices that set the Porirua Assembly apart. Panelists reflect on how the Assembly was shaped to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the local community, including the use of a quadcameral structure and different participation streams. Together, these design decisions challenged standard citizens’ assembly models and opened up new ways for people to participate meaningfully in local decision‑making.
Part 2: Rangatahi process and youth leadership
Part 2 explores the rangatahi process and the leadership role of young people in the Porirua Assembly. Panelists discuss why it mattered to include children and young people as active participants, how the youth stream was designed, and what this revealed about intergenerational decision‑making. Their reflections point to the value of trusting young people as contributors to collective thinking about complex local issues.
Part 3: Community stream, participant treaty, facilitation, recruitment
Part 3 looks at community stream of the assembly, funding, and what it takes to turn deliberation into ongoing governance. Panelists reflect on the role of the Porirua Community Leaders Forum, why this new local body was created, and what this meant for legitimacy, accountability, and momentum. The discussion highlights the importance of embedding citizens’ assemblies within local democratic governance rather than treating them as one‑off exercises.
Part 4: Reflections, learning, and what’s next
Part 4 brings the discussion together through reflection on learning, legacy, and what comes next. Panelists consider what the Porirua Assembly has shown about doing democracy differently, what has endured since the process concluded, and how these innovations might inform future democratic practice.
Transcripts
| Part 1 Transcript: Innovative design to reflect NZ’s founding Treaty and the local community |
| Part 2 Transcript: Rangatahi process and youth leadership |
| Part 3 Transcript: Community stream, participant treaty, facilitation, recruitment |
| Part 4 Transcript: Reflections, learning, and what’s next |
Part 1 Transcript: Innovative design to reflect NZ’s founding Treaty and the local community
[CALLY:] Kia ora. Citizens assembly – generally randomly selected people from the community, based on this many people with this income, this many people who are female, male, etc, who come together around a question. It tends to be a really great experience for the people involved – that seems to be the overwhelming feedback – but they are not necessarily effective in terms of creating change and there’s a lot of reasons around that, but probably a big one is where the funding is coming from, and there’s a conflict between how people can come up with solutions together and how government is able to enact decisions. So, even take the French climate assembly, for example, they were really, really positive about it, really groundbreaking stuff. And then if you look now 10 years on, they implemented 2-7% or something like that.
[CALLY:] So we wanted to acknowledge the good things about this form of deliberation, which has now been going for couple of decades solidly in Europe and other places (North America, Canada, etc) but to look at what it would actually mean to bring it here in a contextual and in an environmentally appropriate way. I think for me one of the big inspirations was the Matike Mai report into constitutional transformation. It’s not a prerequisite, but it’s a huge amount of work that was done by Māori commissioned by the Iwi Chairs Forum, to look at what it would be like for Aotearoa to be honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi in a decision-making space. So, if you do know Matike Mai, the simple way to explain our thing is an experiment into one of those models. So, we took a model where we had Tino Rangatiratanga and Kawanatanga operating in separate spaces, but there was a lot of crossover as well.
[CALLY:] We sort-of think the technical term – a tricameral model – so, it’s the two spheres separately and then coming together at the end. But that doesn’t quite fit what we’ve done because the rangatahi aspect ended up being so significant and there was work that happened in schools that Amanda, Michelle and Wairere led for six months up to that wananga that they had before the climate assembly. So, is there a word – ‘quadcameral’ – that does that?
[EMILY:] A world of firsts. There’s not even a word.
[CALLY:] So, it’s really I guess like Peter said in that video, it’s about having the space to discuss things Māori without the influence of …I mean, ‘without the influence’ is going too far because we had a lot of crossover … we shared a lot of things between our groups, and that would be different everywhere. And, I guess that’s the last thing I’ll maybe land on is that for Te Tiriti to be put into effect anywhere, it’s going to depend on the local context, the local iwi, the mana whenua, and all of that. So I think that’s the other thing about what it means to create something that’s Te Tiriti-led is the local context.
[MAKERITA:] The invitation from them was very powerful: to be part of it. And Helmut Modlik is a very inspirational speaker and he inspired us to be part of it. Like, we are part of it. We live here. They are kaitiaki of the land, but we are part of that too. So the invitation from iwi to be part of this big idea, this new thing, was very, very … What is it when you get pulled into something, you just need to be there, you just need to be part of it? Because it’s like a movement, and their support all the way through this, their vision – you know, it kept us going. Yeah. Because that is the greater picture. Governments and councils go – come and go – but they will be there forever. And he/they opened the door for us to be part of that. So, for me, that was so inspiring. I really felt like I needed to be part of it.
[EMILY:] Anything come to mind that you want to share on that note? How it felt different from other spaces sometimes?
[SANTINO:] Well, it felt very homely, like very comfortable to be in. It wasn’t at all, you know, big blocky articles to read and analyze. It was like: what do you know? what do you live through? what do you relate to being in Porirua and experiencing the harbour change, and experiencing all this or that? It wasn’t at all like governmental – partly council funded or whatever – but it wasn’t frightening to be in, you know, it was relational.
[CALLY:] Yeah. I think one of the things that really sticks out to me – there are so many things about being Ngāti Toa-led that were incredible – and one of the things that I think was significant from a more community perspective, and also in our process of building the thing, is how much vision and energy is able to just move forward through Ngāti Toa. In the mana whenua assembly, they didn’t need to do so much whakawhanautanga as us, they were already on the same wave, they weren’t looking to Council to fix things, they were in the mindset. And I think that was really significant in terms of being an indigenous-led thing, like the influence that had on all of us.
[EMILY:] As you were speaking, I was thinking about how in the community, the connection is there, this collective sense of power is there, the working intergenerationally is there, tikanga was there, eh? Like, knowing what deliberation even is was there, as wananga.
[CALLY:] And knowing the environment.
[EMILY:] My question – for anything that comes to mind – is what happened? Like, so all these design features, all these innovations, and the way that it was being run. Community was involved at a whole other degree compared to other citizens assemblies around the world. It’s unique because even the question was formed through a community participatory design process, right? Nothing has happened like that before. The project team was composed of members all across the community and what I don’t know – if someone would like to share – is about the Porirua Community Leaders Forum, which is another piece of the puzzle that was innovated in the process, as part of community empowerment. Would any of you like to speak to it, as a member of the leaders forum?
[CALLY:] Yes, we have a member right here, and another member. The leaders forum was the initial move, there was no design whatsoever until Ngāti Toa and Te Reo o Ngā Tāngata came together. And then we didn’t start designing either – Helmut said let’s put a call out to our community leaders and see what they think. So the first wananga that we did was back in October 2021. And out of that people said really clearly, we think this sounds great and we also think that there needs to be a similar thing at an inter-community-leader level, to be sharing information and finding solutions and just knowing what’s going on, like that whakawhanuatanga relational stuff. So it’s really been a consecutive development project and they were a big part of signing off all of the co-designs, both the plans and then reporting back to them. They’ve been meeting three or four times a year over the last few years. And it’s definitely a space that is still growing. It hasn’t quite found its form, I would suggest, but it’s really a very significant part of this. I think, in particular, because one of the things the vanilla version of the citizens assembly does is it gives you a loud consensus of public opinion – or as close to it as you – the assembly – manages to get – and then the Community Leaders Forum, it’s more than double, you know. Like, if they agree that it is good advice that’s come out of the thing, you’ve got leaders all across the city who are now either able to directly use the recommendations from the assembly or to collectively put pressure on the decision-makers. So yeah, it’s an amazing innovation that’s still in development.
Part 2 Transcript: Rangatahi process and youth leadership
[ORINI:] In February we brought together nine schools in Porirua. This was all supported by our pakeke (adult) team so I can’t say that this was run by us. They actually organized this. Michele, Amanda, Connor, Wairere and probably so many more in the background. They organized it in February, before the assembly, for all the rangatahi (youth) in Porirua to come together to discuss what climate change is and to just authentically hear what they believe in. We didn’t teach them anything. They came with all of their own knowledge and they just displayed it through creative outlets. So we had workshops, we had poems, spoken word, we had waiata (song) and we had art. And from that one day of wananga, we came together and we created a waiata. We created a collective t-shirt design and we came up with a whole bunch of speeches and poems for the climate assembly. Do you have anything to add?
[SANTINO:] Yeah. Following the assembly, we’ve been in a real power-rolling mode, you know; it has not stopped for us. We’ve been keeping going since then. I don’t think we’ll ever stop actually. Hey, there’s mana in rangatahi (youth) action and I feel it’s important that we empower that and make it happen. And I think to me at least, whatever it may look like for you guys, it truly means a lot to me and the other rangitahi who are part of it. Anything else? Well, that’s about it. Yeah!
[EMILY:] It’s such a huge story in itself, what’s happened. I was thinking about how you came and shared with the broader assembly because the vision that we’ll hear about in a minute is like a weaving of rivers and what you rangitahi were able to generate together was woven in. Would you say something about what it was like to bring that to the assembly?
[SANTINO:] I thought it was a really cool chance to show the assembly (which I was a part of) the other side, the rangitahi side to it — to come together in one room again and actually showcase where we are doing stuff with the rangitahi. We are being involved, we’re staying involved. We showed them our waiata, our t-shirts, our poems. It was really cool to actually come into an equal ground because oftentimes it is not easy for rangitahi to come into adult spaces. It’s not equal at all. And so I feel by doing it the way we did, it made it a lot more equal and fair.
[SANTINO:] Well after day two it was about five of us who stayed on the entire assembly and through that we were able to give our whakaaro on everything going on. Throughout the entire assembly we were told to group up randomly. So 1 2 3 four groups were along the entire room. And through that we would be randomly assorted to different groups. We could share our opinions and they’d be heard depending on who you are, depending on how you feel. And through that [our views] could be shown and then collected through to these recommendations up here. So, especially for rangitahi and tiaohi (adolescents) on education, I feel that voice was heard the most or the most prominently. Yeah, does that answer your question? Just actually being part of it. Yeah.
[EMILY:] I was really struck by that first day. I’m sure it was nerve-wracking to come into that space. You were already there, eh Santino, but that feeling of 20 rangatahi there in this massive space. But from the perspective of those ones in the assembly before rangitahi came in, the question was: “How will we listen to them?” And it was all about priming that room that their role is to listen — the rangitahi are leading. Then when you shared and then we broke into small groups, the question for those ones again was: “What did you hear?” and then turning to the rangatahi and saying: “Is that right?”. There was this real “Is that what you’re thinking of?”, this really beautiful facilitation to encourage what Santino is saying about voices that often are the ones who are undervalued or crowded out being able to be leading on that second day.
[CALLY:] The rangatahi aspect – and tiaohi (adolescents) and tamariki (children) were also involved – is one of the things that’s really been leading. But it’s also one of the things that I think has got the most room for development and improvement. As you say, really to weave it in and not as a separate strand. Going to 15 year-olds was already pushing the envelope — but not far enough. I completely agree with you that the difficulty (and our beautiful friends up the back would be able to talk to this) is getting into schools, getting access to children. It was so much work. It was like they’re not in, my god. It’s like Michele’s got her blood pressure thing on because… it was really hard. So I think in Porirua, because it’s a small place, there might be a way that we can continue to try and get the schools to be part of bringing rangatahi into these spaces as equals because [that is what] we do. One of my friends just very briefly said to me the other day, “The young people are older than us because they know what’s coming — they’ve got more knowledge about the future and so, in a way, we are young and don’t have the knowledge — they are the ones who are like holding it all. I agree with that. We actually already got some [of that knowledge].
[ORINI:] Intergenerational knowledge is so important. I’ll just say that it’s the best way for young people to learn. I love learning from aunties, uncles, koroua, kuia, everyone. That’s my favorite way of learning. And it’s just through stories. I just love hearing the stories from back in the day. My whakapapa is actually to Samoa and to this place right here, Aotearoa. So I love hearing about my experiences with my Nan on my Samoan side and everything that she’s experienced in Samoa. Those just add on to the layers that all of our young people have because we all come from diverse places. All of our home lands are actually affected by climate change no matter where we come from.
Part 3 Transcript: Community stream, participant treaty, facilitation, recruitment
[MAKERITA:] So, the task was to bring these people together. My experience of bringing people together as a facilitator is to start on the common ground. Everyone has a say about that common ground. And what the exercise I used was to create a treaty of how we were to be with each other. Some people call it an agreement, a treaty, rules. But “rules” is a bit much, cos we rebel against rules. So I just use an exercise for whakawhanaungatanga [creating trust and belonging] and got everybody to say what would stop them from participating. And when they fed back and told us what would stop them from participating, the second part of that exercise was to fix it, fix that problem. They came back and said all kinds of wonderful things, all about relational drivers — “I will feel respected”, “I would feel part of it”, and all of that. As they said that, we wrote up our treaty from the [actual] words that they said. So that was the beginning of our relationship together. And everybody had a say and the treaty was the thing that guided us throughout really. All the technical stuff came in it, and Cally’s great at that, but the binding of everybody, getting to know each other, respecting each other, respecting that there are different views — and there were a lot of different views. But no one really came to blows about it because we had our treaty to fall back on. Yeah! So it was really important to do that.
[CALLY:] We came up with the demographic proportions that we thought felt the most like Porirua. So we tried to … and then we gave a little bit of extra weight, which is what sometimes happens depending on what the question is, to rangatahi, for example. We went fifteen and up. Most citizens assemblies will go eighteen and up but not younger. Then we had some help from the great people at Trust Democracy or Koi Tū, both, yeah! We were able to use a free sortition program. So once we had it all set up, it was very surreal sitting in the room with Sherryn and Simon and actually pressing the button “Go!” on this thing. The first time we’re like —oh, it doesn’t quite have the right proportions. It’s a fairly technical thing, random stratified sortition. The hardest part of it was getting people to respond [to our initial invitations to participate]. We actually did an old-fashioned hand delivery campaign of almost 12,000 invitations. Then once people responded to that, we could send them out a survey and say, “Please fill this out and we’ll put you into the lottery.
[MAKERITA:] We did, you know, yeah, everything! We did everything! We did that because a random sortition didn’t feel like [it would be] very community-led or relational. So, we could have just put all the names into the machine — but we just needed to add that little step because we found that, because of our cultures, it didn’t feel relational enough. So, we did all the footwork, poor Sherryn, to get the word out there to sign up.
[Cally:] The sortition was definitely something that we were a lot more flexible on than any other assembly that I’ve read about. For example, on the first day, we didn’t meet the quota for Pacifica that we had hoped [for]. So we went out into the community and found people who wanted to participate. Another one was that we invited rangatahi to stay after day two. Day two was all around rangatahi and it just felt like the right thing to do if they wanted to be there for the rest of it. So yeah, there was some fudging around the sortition which doesn’t normally happen. Not fudging — that’s not the right word…
[EMILY:] No, I just want to say [that] every adaptation in the name of relationality: (a) yielded way better representation of exactly those who typically are under-represented; [and] (b) could be justified — it was always still demographically randomly chosen right to the very end. Even for that, it was asking people, “Hey, would you please put your name forward?” So it was very rigorous. And [point] (c), I just learned at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy last week — someone said, “The biggest kept secret is, nobody does sortition exactly right!” Everywhere around the world! Yeah, I know — all of that effort, all of that — I know! So the biggest kept secret is — it’s actually a misnomer; everyone adapts, especially in the Global South, especially there, where the idea of random fairness through not having relationships [is not accepted]. So yeah, I just wanted to make sure that was on the table.
[CALLY:] We have noticed an observation that there’s a certain type of people who really feel confident about sortition and it’s the people who currently have a lot of privilege and power. So yeah, I’ll just leave that there.
[MAKERITA:] So while we were doing our treaty together, we also kind of … this a little thing that me and Cally did after getting some advice: we also asked our group — “ We would love to get 100 percent agreement across the line and we may not get 100 percent. So is 80 percent okay in agreement?” And they agreed. So we didn’t have to fudge around by the percentage that would agree in the end to something — we had already set it up. Anything to pass, we needed 80 percent. Going for 100 percent but 80 percent would do. I’m going to hand it over now to Cally who did all the hard work.
[CALLY:] I don’t know about that – there was lots of hard work from everyone including the participants — hugely, yeah, it was hard work. A brief overview of the process, is that useful?
[Emily:] Sure.
[Cally:] Of the days—so, we started with whakawhanautanga between the two groups, [as Makerita has described] and a bus tour of Porirua that Ngāti Toa hosted, which everybody loved it by the sound of things. I wasn’t on the bus, sadly. And then we went into some learning and started to discuss. And the general process for getting to the recommendations was teasing out bits that were important to people, elaborating on it, and then simplifying it, and getting it as close as possible. So the community group, I think, had about eleven recommendations that we went into the shared space to have with Ngāti Toa. And they had done their own set of about six or seven [recommendations], which were framed quite differently. And then we exchanged those over … in the break between the two weeks. And then on the final day, we all came together and tried as hard as we could to get the language, you know, and there were some small groups of words smithing and big groups of what’s the approach. And we didn’t quite land it. So we agreed to do another half day, which is another innovation that we have used the whole time and is really, I think, something about being indigenous-led as well as moving at the speed of trust and doing what needs to be done regardless of the initial timeframes that you had hoped to achieve that in. So yeah, hopefully that. And then we did at the end the thing where you, where everybody, when we finally got there – just in case there’s any facilitators out there because this is a really helpful technique – you say “Everybody stand up! If you can’t live with this, stay standing!” We used it a couple of times. There was a couple of times someone stood up and they talked about what it was. So in the end, I feel like we never really voted. We just agreed the whole way. Yeah! But voting is also a good option. You know, we did vote during the process on different parts of it.
[CALLY:] Yeah, actually in my dream, as soon as we would start talking about this, I was like, “We can make a space for this.” Like it really needs … Yeah, you could — I ine hundred percent agree. Architecture could really influence the way these things could happen. We chose Pataka [Art + Museum in Porirua] because it’s not a theatre, it’s not an amphitheatre like this. It has different rooms and that kind of thing.
Just while it’s on the top of my mind; the marae, we didn’t use Takapuwahia that often and that’s because they’re very, very busy. And also we are missing our incredible Jodi today from Ngāti Toa because she’s at a tangi. We know a marae would be beautiful — that would have been our probable number one — but it wasn’t an option. Pataka was a really good next option. But yeah, with my background in architecture, I think there’s huge potential for creating spaces where we can facilitate these conversations better.
[MAKERITA:] That comes back to the treaty that we created together. So, and that prepared … although we can ask participants. You know the reason why I am very strong about that’s our breaking ground and our … where we’re all sit in the … on the same page, is that when something goes wrong, we fall back on it. And I always say, if something goes wrong in the group or if something’s not right, I’ll go back: “Are we all adhering to what we agreed to?” And the group looks after themselves, you know, because they all agreed to it.
[EMILY:] And if Sherryn wants to share about the manaaki behind the scenes potentially, just to speak to that question because there was a lot going on behind the scenes as well.
[SHERRYN:] Yeah, I’ll just speak on that. As everybody else said … Oh, kia ora, my name is Sherryn. I was the person in the background. And as people said before there were … everything I would do differently. But one of the things that I was really proud of is how much we stayed in contact with the participants, and that we spoke to the participants before the first Assembly day, and after every single one as well, just to touch base and also provided opportunities to support them outside of that. Some of the stuff went online with Q&A just so we could save some in-person time and so providing support to people around that, opening up other facilities so they could access, touching base with people who had access needs around the presentation of information to make sure that they had everything that they needed and to maintain the relationship so that the people who called them the first time were the people who called them the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth time as well, just to maintain those connections. Yeah!
[EMILY:] Even the team, Sherryn, was as much as possible people who were from … they were also Porirua in a room. So someone that was contacting you had a connection to where you were coming from.
[CALLY:] When we developed the question, we went around as many community groups as we could connect with, particularly in relationship to the environment — but not specifically. There was a lot of, like, the commerce group and blah, blah, blah, everyone, scouts and …
[MAKERITA:] Lots of groups.
[CALLY:] Lots! And through that, we were trying to find the common ground. What is it that everybody is concerned with? And we came up with the question that way which we took back to the leaders forum. The question ended up being— how do we connect and respond as our climate changes? Yeah! Living in Porirua’s changing world together: how do we connect and respond as the climate changes? And as we did that exercise, we also teased out all of the korero that were most important to the community in Porirua. And built these themes around kai, health and well-being was one of them. Um …
[EMILY:] Responding to disasters.
[CALLY:] Oh yeah, resilience response. And then we started connecting with experts based on all of that work. And starting as local as possible and reached out further. And everybody that we talked to was really, really happy to be involved basically. It was awesome!
[EMILY:] But you were saying that hearing from those experts, what they brought into the room, was … gave reason for … you said something about they were leading in solutions.
[CALLY:] I think we knew that — this is just coming back to me — we knew we didn’t have capacity to deal with the mental health crisis that is fully realizing the climate corruption situation. So, we didn’t go there, and we tried to stay with what people are doing? I mean, that’s the question, right? How do we respond and connect as the climate changes? It’s an entry into having the discussion. And yeah, it’s something that keeps me up at night is when everybody … but, yeah, different too. We did want to have more things like we had some quiet zones and things like that. Just very practical stuff.
[EMILY:] What about in the wananga? Is there anything that comes to mind in that question? What was there to help address … did anxiety coming up, or what was there in terms of supporting you to be able to have some pretty difficult … you know, dealing with difficult topics?
[SANTINO:] One of our – what would you call it? – workshops in the wananga was to me, felt very linked to like: “how do you feel about the climate?” And that is inherently like kinda the future thinking. It’s like anxieties. It’s often fearfulness. For our tiaohi, it was often like — my homes are sinking and how can I adapt to that? You know, what does that mean to me? And we explored it through art, through poetry. I felt really powerful for them to use their own voices, their own whakaaro, to put it on paper and then read it aloud and be like: “I can take ownership in what I’m doing now.” And what I see and also what I can just talk about with my family. Anything else?
[ORINI:] I think Santino said it perfectly, but I just wanted to mention that I experienced Cyclone Gabrielle and that’s what truly lit a fire in me to keep on doing this kaupapa. So if it wasn’t for that happening to me, I actually don’t think I would have been a part of this. It’s when a disaster happens when you really want to find a solution. And since I had to relocate to Porirua from Tokomaru Bay, that’s when I was like, whoa! it’s happening here too. I don’t want a big disaster to happen here. Imagine if there were so many people in this town, experiencing it just like my hometown did – and we only had about 200 people and it was chaos – true chaos! And Porirua has a much bigger population than 200 and so it shouldn’t take a disaster for us to make change and find solutions now.
[MAKERITA:] Cally’s right! We just didn’t have enough time to really deep dive into the stress, the fear, the mental health issues that come with this subject. And so what we did was we really tried to focus on hope, you know, the hopeful, the action that brought hope. You know, and when we, when you are action-orientated — and it’s such a huge issue, isn’t it? — it’s huge, it’s worldwide, it’s everywhere — you’ve got to have your team with you that grows. It’s a movement, this is about a movement. And that gives people hope. And I felt that the people just in our community forum, that in the beginning there was a little bit of confusion and a little bit of shyness. And at the end of it, they felt so much more helpful because they were part of this journey. And so that is the way that we dealt with it. That was how we dealt with it.
[CALLY:] We aimed for 50 in the community-wide space. The Mana Whenua group, they had a different system that they were using and they had between 20 and 30 people, maybe, coming into their space. Up to 40 I’d say on the last day. The rangatahi …
[EMILY:] That being 40, 40 – 40 in each group – different people in the Mana Whenua group but the same numbers overall.
[CALLY:] Oh yeah cool. And then there must have been at least about 40 at the wananga, eh? 40 and then maybe a few less that came on the second day. 25 on the second day.
Funding. Sherryn is our funding manager.
[SHERRYN:] So everything but $10,000 was non-government. And the $10,000 came in the last two weeks and that funded the videographer. And that was from Wellington Regional Leadership Committee. So that’s GW, GW-adjacent. It was about $225,000 all up. The largest chunk of money was from J.R. McKenzie and we were awarded $85K from them, 20K from Wellington Community Fund in October 2021. And we rolled that funding over three times before we could actually push the button and go because we were operating at the speed of trust. There was funding from an invite-only Lotteries Fund, from the COGS, from Nikau, from George Macarthy – it’s a smaller one – and funding from Vic for evaluation and research. Part of that funding from Vic also doubled the daily stipend to $100 a day per person. And that was $26,000 of that funding was just daily stipend. But yes, no government funding and philanthropic funding. And there was a three-year gap between the first funding and the next funding we got. It was a long 3 years.
[CALLY:] And an extraordinary amount of volunteer work and paid roles from Ngāti Toa that weren’t included in the funding that we collectively created. And also some paid time from Wesley. Oh, a lot of paid time from Wesley. A lot of resource from Wesley. Enviroschools. Yeah. Papa Taiao … There’s so many organisations that put resources into this through people power. And the Council, the Porirua City Council as well have walked alongside us the whole time – they printed everything. Yeah, even a bit of in-kind from the city council.
[CALLY:] Hmm, kia ora. We had a pre-plan but we didn’t need to enact it. And that actually came way, way, way back when we were talking about what a Te Tiriti-based structure looks like. We identified extremism as a potential risk factor for deliberation. At that point we came up with basically a three-strikes rule. With the treaty, as Makerita said…. Makerita was really good at just pulling us all back to it and saying, “Remember our treaty! Are we all adhering to this, is this kōrero respecting that?” And as Ifopo said, people are holding themselves in that space a lot of the time.
[MAKERITA:] So we didn’t really have to bring it up as “Remember our treaty!” or anything. Most of us, we all got on really well and there was space for debating. You were allowed to debate in safe, respectful ways because that is what we agreed to. And we also agreed that we will value that people have opinions. And there were strong opinions, but they weren’t strong over anyone. Yeah.
[CALLY:] One of the things that was on the treaty that one of the participants added was to focus on the problem, not the person. And I think that was a really useful one that enabled it. Yeah the treaty is really, was really powerful, and it helped everyone to know how to be in that space.
Part 4 Transcript: Reflections, learning, and what’s next
[SANTINO:] More time. Personally, I loved it from the moment I walked in until I walked out late. I could be there it for all day, every day, meeting with you all cos, again, we were like family by the end of it. And so, I would give anything for more time with family. And to actually just meet more, talk more, be able to make more recommendations, make it a bit more clear on the edges, whatever. Cos, again, it was fun and I think it was really important to try to keep the fun up while keeping it important to the kaupapa. I think it’s important that we recognize the time energy that rangatahi put into it and maybe money for them and their time and energy. Hey, I know money’s tight. Hey, we know money’s tight. So recognizing their value, their worth, through, yeah, pūtea [funds].
[ORINI:] I actually — sorry to break it to you all — I wasn’t actually a part of the assembly itself. I was only a part before [it] and after[wards] but that was due to my own health experiences. But anyway, I supported the rangatahi before the rangatahi wananga that we talked about earlier. And then after through one of our pakeke’s [adult’s] PhDs that they’re completing right now. I was a part of their PhD as a research assistant. And we went and interviewed the rangatahi after the assembly in focus groups. So they were like case studies and so I got to authentically hear their [the rangatahi’s] experiences and they were quite mixed – they were very mixed. Some loved it. Some loved being with adults, but others felt inspired… they felt…, oh, inspired (yeah, I’m going to say it like that), they felt inspired by adults to say what adults wanted to hear. That’s what we picked up on throughout that kaupapa. But next time I’d love… but I love what happened – that was truly amazing. It was beautiful. We’ve come up with so many beautiful outcomes through Future Unity. But next time I would really love to see a rangatahi deliberative democracy space just for rangatahi for us to come and collaborate, for us to korero and come up with authentic recommendations from our young people. And just the broader sense of young people, cos I think we only focused on nine [schools] but I know there’s much more than nine schools in Porirua. So if we were to connect with all of them, I could see a possibility of perhaps running an assembly during school times, and connecting with all the schools instead of getting our aunties to run around. Somehow just making it much easier and opening [it] up to all the schools. Holding it during school times would take away a lot of barriers for young people. Sorry, I actually wrote notes for this one cos I was actually really excited for this question. Yeah, preparation before the wananga, support during [it] from our pakeke team and just debriefing after the Assembly – so through our Future Unity group, we’re still connecting with the young people who contributed at the wananga at the start of the year. So yeah, doing that and then a separate adult assembly. I know that there was a mana whenua and a community [assembly] and then imagine if there was a rangatahi [one] as well. Then we all come together and did that instead. That was my idea.
[EMILY:] Anything come to mind?
[MAKERITA:] I’m like Santino — time. Time was really a restriction, I thought. Yeah, so more time on it. And I really want to acknowledge you, Ifopo [an Assembly member], about what you said about the othering because that was another really big learning for me when I reflected back. Did I make the space safe and welcoming enough for our young people? That was a question that I had in my mind afterwards when I reflected on the facilitation. And because whilst our rangatahi whilst with us in the group sessions didn’t speak so much, and then when they left the room, they spoke heaps. You couldn’t stop them from talking. So you know one of my learnings as a facilitator was to take away and think about, ponder, how I make a space safe for everybody including our young people. So thank you for that.
[CALLY:] Kia ora. That was definitely something that happened to me in reflection of facilitation, a lot. Honestly, I think we would try and improve on everything if we were to do it again. Yeah. But definitely I love this idea. I absolutely love this. I would have liked to have paid everyone more in general and definitely paying young people as well. We were pretty limited because of it being not Council-funded, not government-funded in any way. So, the resourcing was pretty limited. And then another thing which you and I have talked about recently is that most assemblies will provide a resource booklet of information to people beforehand and, yeah, we didn’t really spend a huge amount of time getting that as awesome as it could be. And we also didn’t push it out through to the public in ways that there is the opportunity to really try and use it as an opportunity for public education. What stuff did I just write down? Oh, there were things that came up like AI. We hadn’t thought about AI. We didn’t bring in any technologies into our deliberations. But we should talk, man! We should totally talk about a rangatahi assembly — [it] could be Ngāti Toa’s next thing.
[ORINI:] Who knows? Put my name forward!
[EMILY:] I just do want to acknowledge too, as someone observing, the commitment to being a learning culture, the commitment to flexibility responding to emergent learning and, like you said, not being so tightly bound to an idea that it couldn’t change. There was so much improvisation that was chosen, rigorously, along the way in light of what was learned in real time. I saw beautiful deliberative, reflective worlds when you as a project team would meet, and time and again [you asked], “Are we doing this right? What could we do differently?” All the time! I just want to acknowledge that what we are all seeing now is also like the learning culture that distinguishes this project, that was part of its beautiful integrity too.
[CALLY:] I get this question a lot. What do your local mana whenua think? Talk to them! That’s always my advice. It always puts people right back. And they thought they had already got an idea or whatever but it’s the only advice that you could really give because it’s local context. So unless you’re doing it in Porirua then I’m not happy to share our learnings with you.
[MAKERITA:] Yeah I would advise the same as well. It’s not just one person’s advice, I mean idea. And the way that an idea is brought around when there’s conversation and there’s food and there’s time – makes a real difference to it. And relationships, all that soft data that’s so important to us humans that cannot be replaced. So building a safe relational space for people to feel free to speak and say their mind, speak their mind, is really important. I think everything else will come from that.
[ORINI:] I think what I just said before — so a community group, a mana whenua group and a rangatahi group, all having their own wananga but then coming together and coming up with recommendations as a collective. That’s how you’ll get authentic rangatahi voice if you really care about what young people are caring about at this time and about climate, or that’s what we focused on, that’s how you’re going to get an outcome — it’s from actually just having young people together in one room because it is intimidating — adults are intimidating — and especially if you’re 15 — I remember when I was 15 and I wouldn’t want to talk in front of adults at all and I still feel kind of weird talking to adults right now at 20.
[SANTINO:] Keep it not simple, but keep it understandable! Cos I feel like for rangatahi especially, a big barrier is actually feeling you don’t know anything. Whereas if you are human and you grow up, you know so much more than you could ever know. So by making the kaupapa easy to approach, it makes it easier for rangatahi to come forward to the table and provide their whakaaro.
[MAKERITA:] How can we build and use this? Well, in a community like Porirua, there’s a lot of people working towards this. There are so many taiao [environmental] groups out there and what they are actually working against is the disasters that will happen. But it’s like strengthens based, right? When you think in a strength-based way, it means that you focus on what you want to build. If you focus on the things that you want to build, it will grow, you know. Just like the mental health question — we didn’t have time to delve right into it and we went the opposite way because we felt we’ll grow this, and that will deal with it. So, is that one part of the question? How am I answering?
[CALLY:] Yeah, I think Amanda’s going to add something. Can we get a mic up to her? Kia ora, Amanda. Yeah, and can I say as well that I think being Ngāti Toa-led is really significant here because something that I didn’t anticipate to the extent that it happened, was that Ngāti Toa have taken these recommendations and put them into all of their departments. And they are promoting them amongst the community. They’re starting a website where we’ll be able to … where the community, the wider community, can track projects that have come out of it or contribute their own projects if they think that they’re aligned with the recommendations. So from Ngāti’s Toa go-and-do-it, and because they trusted the process, they 100% took the recommendations and are going for it. So we’re looking [now] at how we will track, weigh and measure this at the moment.
[AMANDA:] Kia ora, koutou! Ko Amanda Dobson ahau! I am lucky enough to be the Enviroschools Community Facilitator in Porirua which gave me the opportunity to be involved with this incredible kaupapa — world-leading. It’s been an incredible learning journey and we’re still on it. And we’re learning so much along the way because we’re cutting new ground, right, and we’re learning as we go. And so, I guess, Michele and I are going to share a little bit of what we did. So like we all have a role and a responsibility in this, in my opinion, whether we were part of the assembly or whether we live and/or work in Porirua. So our job? We’ve been involved in the Community Leaders Forum over the past 5 years that was moving towards this and for a long time I was wondering like: what my role in this is? Like how do we bring … and it was about being the people in the community that could bring young people’s voices. And so here we have these incredible young people leading. And so much is going on for them as representatives, as young people. And our job is to be their support crew, to be there as they need them, to make it easy. So we’re continuing to do that. And we’re each … like there’s something for all of us that’s about what resonates for us. And so we have the connections. At the moment, we are working towards a community of practice for our schools — a community of practice on climate action. And we are in the schools inviting them on that journey – they’ve been invited along the journey – and it is very challenging time to be asking/bringing this to people who don’t have a lot of time and energy around all the other things. But it’s so critical and, I guess, the context of our schools at the moment that are saying they are committing to upholding Te Tiriti beyond what the government is saying at this point in time, we’re saying the recommendations in Porirua from this process are our way to uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi in Porirua because it’s iwi-mandated, because it’s community-led. And we need to be making this a critical part of the learning for everyone in our space. So I’ll let Michelle add her voice to that.
[MICHELE:] Just getting back to the point about bringing people together. So Porirua actually has had three areas that in the 20 years that I’ve worked there, people pretty much stayed in their three areas. I think this assembly is the first time there was representation from across the whole of Porirua in one room. And now we’ve hopefully got 22 of our 30 schools committed to being a community of practice across Porirua and doing it without any promise of time or whatever – I mean it’s early days – but it’s to me, it’s bringing those schools together to share practice in a way that there was hope for in the Kāhui Ako system [Communities of Learning collaborative networks programme] but that’s gone now but we’re doing it and we’ll do it without … well actually I think Helmut [Modlik, Ngati Toa Rangitira] sums it up brilliantly when he talks about this and the outcomes of this. He says “no one’s coming whanau – we have to do it, no one’s coming.” And I think that’s one of the outcomes for this in terms of bringing people together. And schools have to do this because they have to teach how to think and act critically in a whole range of things and that’s been smashed a bit at the moment. So it’s like, yeah, this is the opportunity for schools in Porirua to really get it together, I hope.
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