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The Colac Bay Youth Jam – photo by Guy Ryan

This week the ReGeneration roadtrip crew hit the South of the South through Wanaka, Queenstown, Te Anau, Riverton and Invercargill. I am constantly surprised by the individuality of each region, its people, landscapes and cultures. In each place, it seems, a new narrative pops up and this week did not disappoint, with the emergence of two strong stories – wahine and wood.

The first began with Alison Broad, an amazing advocate for equality who dedicates her time to Wahine Toa, Inspiring Communites and a wide variety of other awesome causes. She is also the chairperson if the Murihiku Young Parents’ Learning Centre, a great new facility that provides secondary
school education for teenage mothers and care for their babies. It’s taken seven years of hard work to get the centre up and running, but it’s doors
finally opened in January with a full roll of 30 young parents. You can check out our 90-second documentary on Alison and her work at http://
www.regeneration.org.nz/in_your_region/southland

At our Colac Bay Youth Jam I had the pleasure of interviewing four girls from a group called Te Roopu Tui Tui. Two years ago, these young Maori
women got together and decided they wanted to do something to change the negative stereotypes they faced at school. The girls created Te Roopu
Tui Tui as a way of supporting each other to finish high school, get better grades and ensure that Maori received appropriate recognition and respect
in their school.

Then there was Tina McColgan and the other ladies from the Maori Women’s Welfare League. They catered our youth event at the Takutai o te Titi
Marae and told their stories to us as well. I was blown away by my ignorance of conditions for Maori women just a generation or two back and humbled
by their positive ways of being in the world. Isn’t it awesome how quickly change can happen?

The second story to my week was wood. We had the pleasure of meeting the team from the Longview Trust in Wanaka, who has established a native
plant nursery as part of an innovative housing development project. The group are now producing and planting around 40,000 locally sourced native
plants each year. Their project, while admirable, seems out of reach for many of us who don’t have access to land and other resources but the visit
got me thinking about ways to re-vegetate our hillsides with native trees and repopulate our economy with jobs.

We also had a chance to reconnect with the Guyton whanau in Riverton have built up an incredibly diverse and alive food forest in their back yard
and Mathurin Molgat, a Queenstown based film-maker who’s advocating for Kauri timber to be grown commercially. Investing in long-term native
forestry options with high quality native timbers like Kauri and Totara seems like an awesome idea. Imagine the difference if just a fraction pine tree
plantations were removed and replaced with native forests? I don’t know anything about forestry, but it’s worth considering and I’d love to hear ideas
from readers who’ve got…

So many good things happening and so much to think about!

We’re in Dunedin this week, so if you’re in the area, come along to an event or email [email protected] for a chat.

Tags: inspiring, Maori, native trees, Youth