Ann Hartley: Trust enables communities to take responsibility for their own destiny

Opinion

In 2006, faced with overwhelming evidence that educational success continues to evade so many young Maori and Pacific Islanders, trustees of ASB Community Trust saw an opportunity to make a difference with funds that were not tagged to infrastructure or existing projects - funds that could instead be focused on innovation.

Now, after three years of work, we have committed more than $10 million to the Maori and Pasifika Education Initiative (MPEI). The investment will significantly lift Maori and Pasifika educational outcomes over the next five years.

Launched last month, this historic initiative has been an uncharted journey to address the serious problem of educational underachievement. After a series of hui and fono throughout the region it was clear that solutions lay in the community, so MPEI has focused on community innovation, supporting ideas that have grown from grassroots experience. We received over 300 proposals from groups in Auckland and Northland, with seven groups getting funding.

Their resounding message was "we think we can take charge of this problem and turn things around for our people - but we need to do it our way". The list of groups is on the www.initiative.org.nz website, but what is important is that people with passion and vision were already working on this problem. Now, funded for the next five years, they have the resources to turn their vision into reality.

The journey has been guided by Maori and Pacific educational and community leaders, who joined us to develop the terms of reference for the MPEI. Their professional backgrounds and mana have added credibility at both an educational and community level.

On the Maori selection committee we had MP Kelvin Davis, Auckland University's Dr Manuka Henare, Dr Elizabeth McKinley and Rangimarie Hunia, Education 4 Enterprise director Frank Leadley and ASB Community Trust trustees Sister Mary Foy, Waitai Petera, Kevin Prime and Kristen Kohere-Soutar.

On the Pacific selection committee were Unitec's Linda Aumua, Ministry of Social Development's Mokauina Fuemana-Ngaro, Ministry of Educations's Ezra Schuster and educational consultants Faafua Leavasa-Tautolo and Lili Tuioti, who joined trustees Sister Mary Foy, Soana Pamaka, Jenny Kirk and Wilmason Jensen.

Together we developed MPEI's powerful guiding vision: "Ma tatou ano tatou e korero" (we speak for ourselves). The words of Ngati Hine's Kevin Prime, my predecessor as chairman of the trust, best explains that vision: "For so many years others have been speaking for us ... we can speak for ourselves."

As philanthropists, we know that becoming agents of change is a slow process. As a result, we have promised long-term commitment which includes robust evaluation of the groups' results by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research.

The process has been challenging and we have learned a lot along the way. We learned the importance of everyone's contribution that forms and protects our relationships with the communities we serve.

Our goal is to build upon the trust's traditional roles, while contributing to strategic discussions of policy, innovation, and sustainable solutions that allow everyone in our communities to fully engage in society.

Ann Hartley chairs the ASB Community Trust.