Te Toi Ora ki Whaingaroa

Marae based integrated outreach clinics embedded in Tikanga Māori. By Māori, for Māori but for everyone else.. a true sentiment.“Everything happened through covid” explains Mike Edmonds, General manager and a key instigator in the creation of Te Toi Ora ki Whaingaroa. “We had large numbers of whānau moving back to their ancestral land in the Waikato who were living in tin sheds. They had no running water,no food, no power and no access to basic health” explains Mike Edmonds. “We had this community, a family of 35 with 22 kids, who were screaming out for help.” A quick phone call to Michelle Meenagh at Raglan Medical led to them saying  “Well let’s just send out a doctor and a nurse and see what we can do.” With the blessing of the trustees of Mai Uenuku ki te Whenua Marae, they were able to base the medical services on site at the Marae. On the first day there were five people, the second maybe eight but by the third day there were over one hundred whanau coming from across the whole Waikato to reach out for our healthcare services.“People come to the Marae because it's a safe space” says Mike, “but more importantly for me, it's a space where Māori can be Māori and not judged for being Māori.”Four years later, Te Toi Ora has expanded its services to continually address the underlying inequities for Māori and Pasifika in the current system.  “The biggest barrier to access of healthcare is cost” explains Mike, “so we have made all of our services 100% free and 50% of of our kaupapa is dedicated to Rongoā Māori”“Normally you get funding to go and run a programme, well we have done it from the ground up. The need came to us and we have responded to that need” says Maria Huirama, Chairperson of Mai Uenuku ki te Whenua Marae and long time social worker.  “I’m all about social and Mike’s all about health…and well, I’m also the kitchen cook!” laughs Maria.Te Toi Ora is all about whanau, whanaunga and creating safe spaces for the whole whanau to get their medical and social needs met at the same time. With the key Marae being Poihakena Marae in Whaingaroa, they are now operating at rural Marae along the west coast from Waingaro all the way down to Marakopa south of Kawhia. “We want our whanau to know that ‘We hear them and we see them’” explains Mike, “and that we will do our best to help them in the ways that work best for them”.This is an incredible example of systems Change in action from the grass roots up.