Learning from Māori in their Community Suicide Prevention Initiatives

A Waka Hourua Community Fund managed by Te Rau Ora ( then Te Rau Matatini) and Le Va provided a one-off contestable fund to  Māori  and Pasifika communities to build their capacity in community-based suicide intervention initiatives or projects.
Between 2014 and 2017,  Te Rau Ora had the privilege of supporting 47 Māori community suicide prevention and postvention initiatives across Aotearoa.   Upon conclusion of these initiatives being evaluated, their findings were individually published.   These Māori Waka Hourua Community Fund initiatives are showcased under three groupings of community, whānau and rangatahi, which  are profiled on our website  where you can read about their initiatives and evaluated outcomes.
https://teauMāori .com/research/Māori -suicide-prevention-initiatives/
We had the opportunity to publish all of these findings in Journal of Indigenous Wellbeing: Te Mauri Pimatisiwin:   McClintock et al. (2017). Eke panuku eke Tangaroa: Evaluation of Waka Hourua, Māori community suicide prevention projects. 2:2, 77-104. Journal of Indigenous Wellbeing: Te Mauri Pimatisiwin.
https://teauMāori .com/matauranga-knowledge-base/
This month we share one of our flashback digital stories from the Community Fund of Mika about his experiences and of the Aroha project funded by Te Rau Ora (then Te Rau Matatini) as part of the community suicide prevention fund.
Mika’s breadth of experience is broad, he emphasises that if we want to help rangatahi the resources need to be free, taken to them and strategies led by rangatahi!
Mika observed successes amongst rangatahi when their dreams were listened to and encouraged. Mika leaves us with two areas needing to be aware of – they are ensuring takatāpui are included in many conversations and the warning around the exploitative nature of social media today.