Pacific Business Trust CEO Mary Los'e is working with BBM boss Dave Letele to create a new recruitment agency.
Pacific Business Trust CEO Mary Los'e is working with BBM boss Dave Letele to create a new recruitment agency.
Community advocate Dave Letele had trouble getting the right staff to deal with the major issues often facing his people and their whānau.
Letele said he would recruit people, but then lose them to the private sector, or not be satisfied with their wairua or how they dealt with whānau.
However, a meeting with Pacific Business Trust (PBT) - the government-funded economic link for Pacific Island businesses - changed Letele’s thinking, and today he launched his own recruitment company.
Letele is the creator of the BBM (Brain, Body, Movement) programme, which runs free fitness boot camps, and is involved in multiple community initiatives, including food sharing systems.
Letele said the Pacific Business Trust’s CEO Mary Los’e and her team helped develop a business plan for his recruitment company and provided invaluable support.
PBT supports a network of 2243 small to medium owned-and-operated Pacific Island businesses in New Zealand.
“With the work we at BBM are doing, and the people we see through our food share and our employment programmes, there was a missing link,” Letele said.
“We needed a certain kind of individual who could take and support people on their journeys,” he said.
“With the health programmes we run, we have people who can’t drive because they can’t get behind a steering wheel so the person who is dealing with them has to be mentally and sometimes physically strong to support that person.
“We had other recruitment companies come in but they never looked after our people well enough, and if you don’t look after our people, they are not going to relate.”
That got Letele thinking about training his own workforce.
Dave Letele set up BBM - which runs free boot camps - as well as a food share system for his communities.
“The kaupapa of BBM is to give people a hand up and not a hand out,” Letele said.
“At the food share we operate, we have people who have been coming in for a few years. Transitioning these people into the workforce is where we are going - so making sure they have the complete full wraparound service is what I want to establish.”
Los’e said Letele is committed to greater outcomes for all and being at the coalface, he recognises current practices are not always delivering for high priority populations and communities.
“It’s not always about best practice, sometimes it’s about what’s best for that particular community to practice, they’re already living the challenges and they also know what can work for them. Dave is not only naturally attuned to this, he is proven to deliver improved outcomes.”
She says Letele’s team has the vision and energy to deliver the new venture.
“I love seeing Dave deliberately using his experience and setting up sustainable business practice for this new venture. We talked at length about how he might wish to action his passion in a different space, like building his own workforce to deliver the outcomes he knows his team can achieve,” Los’e said.
“BBM recruitment is an example of seeing the opportunity within an unmet community need and proactively building a business to address it. Pacific and Māori are at a point where we have to create pathways of intergenerational wealth, very few jobs will ever provide this to whānau, BBM is leading the way, it’s time.”
