Kotahitanga - Funding opportunity and film challenge

Make a difference for youth

We’re keen to remind community providers with youth mentoring and coaching talent, expertise and networks to tender by 4 October 2019 for new Youth Service contracts.

The Youth Service helps to support young clients aged between 16 to 19 to achieve their education, work and life goals — to discover and work toward dreams that have meaning for them.

Last year we listened to young people and current providers and made the following improvements to the Youth Service:

• More time and support: young people told us the most important thing for them was more time for support from a highly skilled youth coach. The new contracts will deliver more intensive case management for young people, with more engagement and whānau support for our young people.
• More focus on employment: we heard there should be more focus on employment so young people have more opportunities to succeed. Education and training remain important and employment has been added as an outcome for some.
• Flexible funding and less compliance: providers told us they needed more flexible funding, and to spend less time on compliance. The new contracts are up to five years (from 1 April 2020) and include simpler payment conditions. Although we’ve changed the contract funding model, the overall funding is the same.

Film challenge open to rangatahi

The 2020 E Tū Whānau Rangatahi Film Challenge is now open. Young people up to the age of 24 are invited to enter by making a short film using one of E Tū Whānau's six values. Winners could have their film screened at next year’s Māoriland Film Festival and share in $1,000 in cash and prizes.

It’s six years since E Tū Whānau partnered with the Otaki-based Māoriland Film Festival for the first Film Challenge. In that time hundreds of young people have let their imaginations run wild to write, direct, animate and act in their own short movie. They’re learning how to control their own visual image and tell stories about the world they live in, in the way they experience it.

Many came to the kaupapa by attending workshops led by members of Māoriland Trust’s rangatahi leadership roopu, Ngā Pakiaka. These are young people who’ve taken part in earlier workshops and made films for previous E Tū Whānau Rangatahi Film Challenges.

This year Ngā Pakiaka members aged between 16 and 22 years shared their skills with fellow rangatahi at workshops in Otaki, Kirkiriroa, Tāmaki Makaurau, Kaitaia, Hokianga and Rotorua.

This tuakana teina approach is a win win for everyone, says Māoriland Programme Manager, Madeleine de Young. “Ngā Pakiaka whānau grow creatively by sharing their skills, and newcomers to the filmmaking kaupapa are inspired.

“Those Māori kids were so on to it,” says Luke Moss who helped facilitate a workshop at a Hokianga kura kaupapa. “This wasn’t something that their parents made them sign up for. They were genuinely interested and willing to learn.”

Ngato Zharnaye Livingstone describes how one, ‘stand-offish’ tauira opened up when he started recording sound. “His eyes lit up when he realised that he could make his own sound effects and beats for the film’s waiata. That was cool.”