A group of Moerewa and Kawakawa residents will take the talk for a walk when it comes to straightening out the future for their young people. Speaker after speaker at a meeting in Moerewa last week voiced their fears that another generation has been lost to drugs and gang culture. That ill-earnedbuck stops here, according to many who called for a new community action plan that could help to bring about positive change. The group will try to harness the stream of ideas that came out of the meeting, attended by more than 60 parents, educators, Ngati Hine runanga representatives and community leaders. Among the concerned parents and elders who called for a zero-tolerance stance were former drug-users and gang members who spoke openly about their past and their hopes that their own children would experience a better life. "If you want to do something for your whanau, you can't just talk about it. You have to walk the talk, and then you get out there and you keep walking the walk," one man said. He told the meeting that people who wanted to save a whanau member from the grip of drugs such as P, or gangs, "need to have balls, because it's hard". Ngati Hine Runanga chairman Pita Tipene said the steering group would bring back to another meeting in some kind of workable, reviewable form the stories and issues raised at the emotional hui. He said he had been saddened at some speakers' sense of hopelessness and the view it was already too late to combat the effects of two generations of drug abuse and crime. After recent high-profile incidents that cast a negative light on the community, and the public outpouring of grief and concern, locals were ready to rebuild a healthy sense of community, Mr Tipene said. From now on, the solutions, not the problems would be focused on. "We hope this move will give us the beacon we need for everyone to have hope," he said. "Education and enterprise - the two "Es" - that's what we [the runanga and various health and service organisations] can help with. "Those are the things that will bring about change, but it's up to a community to want that." Mr Tipene said a plan already existed and was being implemented in local schools to help to support the runanga's anti-drug kaupapa.
