Supporting Wayfinding for Life

We have a 40k shortfall to run our Māori suicide prevention programme (Wayfinding for Life) and our  Māori and Pasifika entrepreneur programme ( visit WERO here) in high schools.
 
Wayfinding for Life take students through the framework in a day filled with relays, poems, songs and even meditation. Not only do they create a compass to guide them to feel emotionally and  physical better, they also identify what is and could go wrong in their lives. From there they create 5-step prevention plans. So far they’ve created 84 plans covering how not to fail exams, overthink things, be overcome with grief, or how to recover from injury or support family health. 

I started WERO because Māori and Pasifika were not getting opportunities to learn about entrepreneurship. Māori made up 95 percent of our students last year and came schools across the South Island. The main national entrepreneurship programme that runs in schools has less than 5 percent Māori participation.  WERO students work in groups to take a business idea through the Wayfinding framework. They start  with a workshop and then for 8 weeks work with coaches in our online course. The main uptake for WERO has been in rural areas where opportunities like this are rare. 

We went down several funding rabbit holes for our entrepreneurship programme, which is in its second year.  And in the end, we decided to self fund.  At the same time we secured funding for Pasifika students but not Māori to do our suicide prevention programme. To me this breaches my Treaty responsibilities and really if we could reach that one child in need, then we had a moral obligation to do so.  So again we now funding this part of the programme too.  

Flying Geese is in a peculiar situation because we aim to serve Māori people and interests but we are Pasifika led, hence we cannot access funds for Māori organisations. I'm okay with this. It just means we have to be canny and look for other types of funding support.   However, it is putting strain on the team and I’m trying hard not to sail into any financial reefs. True, I could choose not to do it. But I’m faithful that the universe will assist (or at least EHF) and I feel that Māori and Pasifika young people deserve to have these programmes offered to them. 

The 40k ask is half the running costs of these programmes. I’m putting up the other half. So please join me in part of the solution.