Jim Edwards next to Ngā Tukemata-o-Kahungunu at his Whakatū property. Photo / Jack Riddell
A Hawke’s Bay kaumātua who’s helped disabled people find confidence and work for the last 35 years is calling it a day and retiring.
But he still wants to complete his mission of paddling the waka he helped build on his local river one last time.
Jim Edwards and his wife Marie started the Ngā Tukemata-o-Kahungunu Vocational Charitable Trust and Vocational Service in the 1990s.
The service is operated and funded through the trust and operates a programme for people with permanent disabilities aged between 16 and 65in Whakatū.
The service’s kaupapa (philosophy) is for clients to have greater access and acceptance in the wider community – being valued for their skills.
Edwards started working with people with challenges, youth at risk and the Department of Corrections in 1989 and 1990 while he was still working at Tomoana freezing works.
By the time that closed in 1994, Edwards knew he could make a programme out of his social work.
“And then it got bigger and bigger,” Edwards said.
At the programme, Edwards helped his students set up individual goals and find ways of achieving them.
Edwards worked tirelessly at the trust, including spending more than $150,000 of his own money to keep the programme going.
Through their work, Edwards and his wife have won awards, including Hastings District Council civic honours for voluntary community service, a Pride of NZ Lifetime Achievement Award, and many more.
While working with Corrections in the 90s, Edwards was thinking about building a large war waka, or waka taua, that both men and women could paddle as a tourism experience – a world first for a waka.
For a decade he and Marie survived on $125 a week while he volunteered his time to help others and build the waka, which was to be used as part of the therapy he provided, as well as education and as a tourism venture, with the goal to benefit individuals from all cultures and walks of life.
Eventually, through the work of Edwards and others, the waka was completed in 1996.
At 20m long and weighing around six tonne, the waka sat proudly on the banks of the Te Awa o Mokotūāraro, welcoming visitors and community groups from around the country and world aboard to paddle down the river.
In 2019, mud and grass clogging Te Awa o Mokotūāraro and the lack of tours they were able to take out as a result forced Edwards to try to find somewhere else to take the waka.
That somewhere else never eventuated and then the Covid pandemic hit in 2020, temporarily stopping cruise ships and tourists from visiting Hawke’s Bay.
Then Cyclone Gabrielle hit Edwards’ Whakatū home with floodwaters, from which they are still rebuilding.
In April, he was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer and has been working to get the waka back on the water one last time.
He says it’s now the only thing he wants to achieve in retirement.
In a statement, a spokesperson from Hawke’s Bay Regional Council (HBRC), which is tasked with the maintenance of the river, said Te Awa o Mokotūāraro was last dredged in 2009.
Dredging work was included in the council’s Long-Term Plan with an estimated cost of $3.4 million and “ideally” would happen every 10 years.
The dredging matter was taken to HBRC before Cyclone Gabrielle to seek an additional $3m, but HBRC did not allocate the money at the time and deferred the decision to the next Long-Term Plan.
The next opportunity for HBRC to reconsider funding for dredging the river will come during the development of the 2027-2037 Long-Term Plan.
“If funding is approved then, the timing of the dredging will depend on when the funding becomes available, and capacity within HBRC to deliver this kind of project,” the spokesperson said.
A celebration for Edwards’ work took place at his Whakatū property on Friday.
He is hopeful he will still be around by the time the river is dredged so he can have one final paddle with his beloved waka.
Edwards’ daughter Jodi is set to take over the trust and carry on her father’s work into the future.
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in the UK, Germany, and New Zealand.