March 2019 saw Wai-Atamai host it’s inaugural Social Innovation Symposium. Over the course of the symposium, social innovation was explored by staff at Waipareira through five key themes which address best practice for embedding of social innovation. The five themes being:

• Forging a Social Movement for Change
• Producing Impactful Discoveries that are Well Informed and Future Orientated
• Anticipating Surprise, Building Resilience and Generating Opportunity
• Encoding Innovation Into Culture, Structure and Strategy and
• Living the Brand From Inside Out, Translating Impact Through Digital Storytelling

The first edition of the Waipareira Social Innovation Journal was also debuted. As such, the presentations over the course of the symposium gave the authors the opportunity to expand on - and in many cases exemplify through interactive exercises - the core principles of their articles.

The keynote speech, delivered by Sir Mason Durie, succinctly brought together all themes through the focus on innovating futures for urban Māori communities.

Highlights included:

Agreement that innovation is not new to Māori – even in relatively recent times. Innovation by Waipareira has been a response to the realities of whānau in West Auckland and includes:

• New ways of emerging
• New ways of communicating
• New ways of co-ordinating multiple services (e.g. Whānau Tahi) and
• A research programme that prioritises whānau voices and insights.

As evidenced in the presentations over the two days, when social innovation is embedded within the community from a client centred, whānau centric approach, this becomes an enabler for a much stronger and sustainable ecosystem to be built out at micro, macro and meso levels in the social impact ecosystem.

Building on the success of Pitch Local 2018, March the 14 th marked the second iteration of the ‘Dragon’s Den’ style event held at Whoa Studios, Henderson– the regional innovation programme conceptualised by Te Pae Herenga, The Tamaki Whānau Ora Regional Hub as a way of promoting a greater reach into local communities.

The vision remained the same as with the inaugural event, that is - to provide an opportunity for people to present their new and innovative ideas for forming positive change for whānau and the community in a process underpinned by Whānau Ora values. More so, furthering on the collective’s desire to invest in innovative local ideas, the participants were pitching in a bid to receive the necessary funding for their programmes from the available pool of funding provided by the collective.

The vision remained the same as with the inaugural event, that is - to provide an opportunity for people to present their new and innovative ideas for fomenting positive change for whānau and the community in a process underpinned by Whānau Ora values. More so, furthering on the collective’s desire to invest in innovative local ideas, the participants were pitching in a bid to receive the necessary funding for their programmes from the available pool of funding provided by the collective.

In the weeks leading up to the event, partners, mentors and pitchers worked together on learning about logic modelling, outcomes and budgets. They also had the opportunity to attend pitch development workshops to work on how to develop and deliver a strong pitch and to ensure that the applicants had plans in place in order to take their initiatives to the next level. If successful, pitchers would not only be able to deliver the programme or idea from their pitch; but the collective would also support them to capture the whānau outcomes as they progress in order to help them to understand the genuine impact that they are making within the community.

On the evening, the 14 finalists had two minutes to pitch their ideas to a panel of four judges. The judges themselves – Stacy and Scotty Morrison, Merepeka Raukawa-Tait and Kiri Tamihere - were not only important in terms of determining who would receive funding, but also to give feedback and pose questions to strengthen the pitch and in many ways most importantly, to provide encouragement for the finalists, many of which had never been involved in an event such as this before.

The pitches represented a variety of exciting creative solutions for a wide range of issues that could only come from a grassroots viewpoint and a lived experience of these community challenges. Some broad themes appeared out of the pitches, with many focussing on whānau health and wellbeing, rangatahi empowerment and community resilience strengthening. Yet, though the ideas themselves may have been different, ranging from karaoke in schools, to empowerment programmes to hangi cookers, there was consistency in passion and a deep desire to see change for the better within the communities which would benefit from their programmes which shone through past the nerves. This was reflected in a fun twist, whereby all of the finalists who pitched were announced as being successful in receiving funding for their initiatives.

The even itself was attended by a number of VIPs as well as friends and whānau all of which were incredibly supportive and encouraging of the pitchers, which created a great overall atmosphere. So, bar a slightly broken microphone stand the evening went off without a hitch, a testament to the weeks of hardwork and behind the scenes planning that had gone into the event by the team lead by Wai-Atamai Social Impact Architect Kristin Fanselow. Another highly successful event, with a mission and outcomes as impactful to the community as this one provides, means Pitch Local will for certain only continue to develop and grow from here.