Maangere now has its very own planting guide, thanks to a collaboration between between Kāinga Ora, local mana whenua Te Ahiwaru and Te Aakitai, local community organisation ME Family Services and Māori ecology specialists Uru Whakaaro. The guide is an outcome of the Maangere Ngahere Project, which has been running for the past two years, and aims to grow and restore the nga...
Seeing hundreds of plants pulled out after a community planting day has been a catalyst for creativity at the Harania Stream in Maangere East. The incident got Vern Togiatau (local resident, RepFM and ME Family Services) thinking about how to connect his community with the stream, to see the potential and to help care for it. “I used to play in the Harania stream as a child, go eeling and swimming. I wa...
It’s been a bumper planting season in Māngere this year! Since taking out the undesirable title of suburb with the least number of trees in Auckland earlier this year, the ngaher...
The Talking Rubbish team at ME Family Services were thrilled to be able to host our first Open Day in a year last week! Usually a regular school holiday event, the Open Day is a chance for the community to come together, spend time in our Te Puna Oranga garden and makerspace, see our Recovery Room in action, and share learnings about living more in harmony with Papatūānuku.
We have a seasonal theme for each Open Day, offering workshops that reflect what’s happening in the gard...
Did you know that Māngere is the suburb with the least number of trees in the whole of Auckland? This is really bad for our health and wellbeing, especially as the climate warms, and the sun beats down on our houses and streets. It hasn’t always been this way. Māngere used to be a thriving wetland, cloaked in pūriri forest, and teeming with life. Later, it was a patchwork of flourishing gardens- the food bowl of Tāmaki Makaurau.
We still have patches of ngahere and flourishing...
Our Resource Recovery Therapist Georgina Kelly-Ngatoko is always on the lookout for an opportunity to share about her work with the people she meets in her everyday life. As a student of Te Wananga o Aotearoa this year, Georgina was keen to introduce her fellow students to our Recovery Room, Te Puna Oranga garden and makerspace, and to give them a chance to learn more about how to reduce waste at home.
She organised a visit to ME Family Services for them, as part of their farewell f...
Today I am writing this as my last day as CEO of Mangere East Family Service Centre Inc … now ME Family Services. It is not the end of the journey though … I will be continuing on as Chair and will be contracted to do some work to support the Board and the leadership team.
It is a journey that grew out of a cluster of seeds - a baby found in a box at Walter Massey Park; a school and community that did not have connections to the support and resources it needed, a government facing i...
If streams are the lifeblood of Papatūānuku, and intertwined with the health of people, then we have some work to do ...
When Tilani Levenilosa Uluilakepa started her social work placement with ME Family Services back in 2018, she wasn’t thinking much about rubbish. Three years later, the Māngere resident has her own bokashi system going at home, is planning a small vegetable garden, and has become a bit of an ambassador for reducing waste amongst her family and community.
During her three month stint with the Talking Rubbish team, Tilani was introduced to the idea of separating rubbish into differe...
The Talking Rubbish team first met Teau Aiturau (aka Mr Tee) back in 2016, when he set up camp in the carpark at Centre Park, Robertson Rd. His aim was to “make Māngere the biking capital of the South Pacific” by inspiring and supporting people to take up biking to get fit and stay healthy. He planned to recycle old bikes from the community, teach people how to fix and maintain them, and get them confident with riding.
Talking Rubbish quickly saw synergies with ...
Koia Teinakore’s journey to rethink rubbish all started in 2014, with a bus driving assignment to the Waitakere Transfer Station. Having dropped his passengers off for a workshop at the Learning Centre there, he decided to sit in with them, rather than sit in the bus. The workshop got Koia thinking about his own family’s rubbish, and woke him up to what needed to change.
After taking a further three busloads out to the centre, Koia was hooked. “My partner and her Kohanga Reo colleag...
I want to tell you a story about a place, on a long island, on a narrow piece of land between two oceans. It’s a wet, swampy place, with little streams meandering through it, flowing from underground springs and out to the two harbours. The different waters mix and mingle in this place, and out of this wetland, life is generated in abundance. Freshwater fish and eels thrive there, travelling along the streams and across vast oceans to breed. Wetland plants and trees grow along...
It all began in 2017, with the offer of a three-year contract with Auckland Airport to rehome their unclaimed left luggage and lost property. ME Family Services seized the opportunity, converting a meeting room in our office in Mangere East into a Recovery Room, hiring a van for the weekly pick up of goods, and opening our doors to the local community to come and trade.
Utilising the extensive community networks we’ve built up over the past 25 years, we co...
Georgina Kelly-Ngatoko’s garden in Māngere East is an explosion of food at the moment.
Tomatoes, silverbeet, spring onions and celery vie for space with taro plants and cucumbers, making use of the area along the fenceline and the sides of the house for garden beds. The Kaingaora tenant and employee of ME Family Services has been slowly expanding the growing spaces in her backyard since she moved into the house with her family of five 12 years ago.
“There was no gar...
During the past nine months, thousands of people from all around New Zealand have answered the call to come to Ihumātao, to join local mana whenua and Save Our Unique Landscape as they stand together to protect this beautiful and significant piece of land from a housing development.
The massive influx of people into the Ihumatao community was heart-warming, but also challenging. With the suddenness of the eviction of kaitiaki from the...
It’s been nearly five years now since ME Family Services first started our Talking Rubbish work in the community. In the early days, we focused our efforts on finding the people and groups in our community who were already working to protect our environment and helping others find ways to live sustainably. We didn’t have to look hard, because there were so many- from our community and backyard gardeners, to the teachers in our local schools. From our cycling advocates, to our upcy...
ME Family Services turns 25!
ME Family Services reached a new milestone last month, with the celebration of our 25th Anniversary. Located in Māngere East, our service was developed following the discovery of a baby, abandoned in a cardboard box in nearby Walter Massey Park in 1994. The original aim of the centre was to provide a local hub that people could easily access for wrap-around support.
The centre had humble beginnings in the school hall...
In 2018, Talking Rubbish team began building a long-term partnership with locally based, global company Tourism Holdings Limited (thl). thl is the largest provider of holiday vehicles for rent and sale globally, and in New Zealand operates under the Maui, Britz and Mighty rentals brands. An internet search to find community-based support to reduce waste led the firm’s General ...
Get to know our beautiful Anna Meek who is currently a social worker in Read more →
Get to know Toha Wade who plays a huge part within our community. She is an educator with our Talking Rubbish Team, as well as a community gardener, part of Mangere Community Patrols, and owner of her own home-made natural balm business- Totally Toha. Toha strives to empower our community through taking care of our environment. Part Ngai Tuhoe, Whakatohea & Te Whanau a Apanui, Toha is healthy and surrounded by her beautiful grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
What are...
Te Puna Oranga
Te Puna Oranga (“The Spring of Life”) is the name given to the new community garden and makerspace at ME Family Services, by local kaitiaki Pania Newton (Save Our Unique Landscape). She felt the name reflected the wairua of the space and its role in bringing to life the hopes and aspirations ME Family Services has for our community: a thriving, regenerative ecosystem where everyone and everything has value.
The space h...
“First team in History to go through and win D, C and B grade consecutively”
Last week one of our talented South Auckland high-schools McAuley Girls travelled down to Mt Maunganui for the 2018 UNISS competition tournament, the largest NZ Netball tournament for high-schools. These amazing girls represented our South Auckland community to the fullest, taking out B grade and making it the first time in history that a South Auc...
“What’s the biggest environmental problem facing us at the moment?”, I asked a group of Southern Cross Campus young leaders last year? “Litter”, was the overwhelming response. While climate change might be the biggest threat to our continued existence on the planet today, the growing problem of rubbish building up around our streets, parks and waterways is the issue that we all see and deal with every day.
Puna Arere from the Read more →
“The Tararata Stream- where’s that?”, asked one of my born-and-bred-in-Mangere colleagues, when I told her about my next 275 Times assignment. Streams are the hidden gems of our city neighbourhoods, channelling water from our streets out to the harbour and creating habitat for a multitude of plants, birds, fish, insects and people. They play a vital role in our ecosystem, but do we treat them with the respect and care they deserve and need? Do we even know they’re there? I decid...
By Justine Skilling
A recent stay at a marae in Te Urewera has got me thinking (and feeling). I’ve been working as a waste minimisation facilitator in Mangere/Otahuhu for several years now, trying to do my bit to fight the rising tide of waste in our communities through education and the finding of practical, local solutions. But something’s been missing.
The words of Lorna, a Tuhoe woman born, raised and intimately connected with her whenua, Te Urewera, have had a powerfu...
ME Family Services Resource Recovery Room therapist Georgina Kelly-Ngatoko had an “eye-opening experience” on her recent trip with organisation Waste Minz. During the 2 day trip, she followed our trail of rubbish, checking out the recycle plant Visy in Onehunga, the Hampton Downs Landfill, Green Gorilla construction waste recycling, as well as two community resource recovery centres.
“I went on the trip to see what they do with our waste and how other communities deal with it”, ...
A new community space is being birthed in Mangere East, on a small piece of vacant land behind ME Family Services in Ferguson St. The 300m2 site is set to become a hands-on learning, teaching and regeneration space for young and old, with community gardens, a “makerspace”, and seating, eating and meeting areas.
ME Family Services Social Designer John Belford-Lelaulu has been working with groups of students from De La Salle College and Unitec...
