Guests were welcomed on to the site of Te Kupenga Hauora Ahuriri in Napier for the opening of a new community facility on Tuesday. Photo / Doug Laing
Guests were welcomed on to the site of Te Kupenga Hauora Ahuriri in Napier for the opening of a new community facility on Tuesday. Photo / Doug Laing
Trailblazing community-based Napier Māori health and social services provider Te Kupenga Hauora Ahuriri is heading into a new era with the opening of new community facilities this week.
The formalities passed with a dawn blessing of the Sale St building between Munroe St and Hastings St on Monday, followed bya late-morning celebration at which about 200 guests were told of how the need for the facilities was identified in and after the November 2020 Napier flood, the Covid pandemic and Cyclone Gabrielle in February 2023.
Later in the day, its board gave the go-ahead for redevelopment of the administration building, where Te Kupenga Hauora was founded on the former Weldwell site in 1994.
Chief executive Nathan Harrington said work on that block will start in mid-2026.
It’s another step in the dream of founders Te Maari Joe and Audrey Robin, developed in the years following the abolition of the Department of Māori Affairs in 1989.
Restructuring led to the creation of iwi-focused bodies to deliver health, housing and welfare services.
With recent growth, Te Kupenga Hauora has about 70 staff, including nine registered nurses, delivering on usually Government-based contracts and offering a range of prevention and health promotion services and holistic support.
They include family, youth, smoking and emergency housing issues and are aimed at improving the wellbeing of Māori and the wider community, who are often in vulnerable circumstances.
Harringon said that during the calamities, Te Kupenga Hauora was asked to support the community.
“This is the ethos of who we are,” he said. “However, we did not have the right resources available. We were delivering crucial aid to our whānau out of a shed that was not up to the new building standard and was structurally at the end of its life.”
The bulk of the new build has been “self-funded”, but a major donation was received from the Royston Health Trust.
About 200 people gathered to mark the opening of Te Kupenga, the new community facility in the first stage of Te Kupenga Hauora site redevelopment in Napier. Photo / Doug Laing
The Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency also assisted with installation of two generators and diesel fuel storage to enable Te Kupenga to remain operational in “moments that matter”.
The building has a large kitchen and spaces for over 100 whānau to gather, while the organisation is establishing a combined Civil Defence plan for the future, working with marae and partners such as Te Taiwhenua o Te Whanganui a Orotu.
