“Rākau Tautoko has been a long time dream and it’s exciting to finally see it come into fruition. We are starting with small projects, working alongside good people with good hearts, supporting each other in the work that we do together. Let’s see what happens from here.”
– Tara Moala
Rākau Tautoko refers to the branches of a tree reaching out, growing and gaining strength. Innately connected to each other and firmly grounded in good practice and accountability.
Rākau Tautoko is a collective of skilled and creative practitioners that work well individually and together. The collective creates opportunities to share experiences, empower and motivate each other for high quality practise.
There is no limit to how and which direction our branches will grow – as long as they support the development of tuakana within communities. We are limited only by our imagination. A key focus for the practitioners of Rākau Tautoko is to maintain high quality community work and appropriate accountability. Because of this, Rākau Tautoko require all of our consultants to reflect on their practice regularly, and seek supervision if and when possible.
To maintain accountability, we have charitable status (CC57080) and have created a constitution to enable us to align our practice to specific purposes. Our full constitution can be downloaded here. In our constitution, our main purpose is:
- to build engagement and empowerment in communities by:
- assisting community groups to co-design programmes that produce a positive social impact (including by supporting whānau to develop healthy relationships to help combat family violence and improving the wellbeing of rangatahi);
- undertaking research, development and training to contribute to building engagement in empowerment in communities (including by supporting whānau to develop healthy relationships to help combat family violence and improving the wellbeing of rangatahi); and
- such other charitable purposes as the Board may decide.
In addition, our constitution states that all the assets and profits of Rākau Tautoko are for the benefit of charitable purposes in New Zealand. This allows our collective to hold strong to our values and maintain our focus on the needs of our community. If we do have a surplus of funds from any contract or project we hold, we ensure that those funds are then tagged for the same purpose and spent to further grow that purpose.
Click here for a one pager on Rākau Tautoko.
Our Principles
Rākau Tautoko principles are based on Tāmaki Inclusive Engagement Strategy (TIES). The tools, framework and principles of TIES provides a community created, owned and driven strategy in how to engage and empower community members.
Our Way Of Working
3 Key Non-negotiables to help guide us…
- The community we will work alongside asks/wants us to be there.
- Whatever is created, belongs to that community, not the funders or helpers.
- There are enough resources (people, space, time, money, kai) to do the mahi.
Use of Te Reo
Rākau Tautoko acknowledges that Te Reo Māori is an important taonga of Aotearoa. It is the indigenous language of this land and the gateway to the Māori world. We are by no means fluent, however we will endeavour to strive to use Te Reo as much as possible, especially where meanings are better understood in Te Reo. We also understand that not everyone has Te Reo knowledge and therefore we welcome anyone to contact us if we use any Māori that you don’t know or understand.
Tōku reo tōku ohooho
My language, my awakening
Rākau Tautoko 