The ambitious bid to give pounamu to every child in state care
When you’re a young person in the care system, your few possessions become treasures. That’s part of the reasoning behind a programme distributing pounamu to tamariki and rangatahi in state care – all 6,000 of them.
There are more than 6,000 children in state care in Aotearoa, and a new initiative led in part by care-experienced tamariki aims to give them all a taonga of their own.
Tū Māia is a partnership between the whānau of Nelson-based carver Timoti Moran (Tainui/Ngāti Porou/Ngāpuhi/Ngāi Tūhoe) and independent NGO Voices of the Young and Care Experienced (VOYCE) Whakarongo Mai. After an initial gifting of almost 60 pounamu pendants, they have set their sights on an ambitious 6000 more, at a rate of 100 a month, uplifting the mauri of some of Aotearoa’s most vulnerable tamariki and rangatahi through a reconnection with Māoritanga.
Link to article: A taonga of their own: The ambitious bid to give pounamu to every child in state care | The Spinoff
