NAIDOC and Qld Reds game

Our youth group recently had a couple of activities to go on.

First was some of our whanau went to NAIDOC Musgrave Park, the largest NAIDOC event in Australia. It was a very warm day for us to go and awhi Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and to celebrate with tangata whenua tuatahi at their day.

Rangatahi at Naidoc

More NAIDOC

Next we went to the Qld Reds game with St James College to watch the Waikato Chiefs thrash the Reds! A busy and fun day for our rangatahi!

watching the game

traveling home

Don’t forget, now that school holidays are over, we are back this Friday 15 July for our regular rangatahi Kohanga, from 6pm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

St James cultural night Kapahaka 2016

Our Kohanga and St James College and staff from Wesley Mission Brisbane’s Emergency Relief Services recently performed onstage at the school’s annual cultural night. What an awesome night and tino tumeke performance from our rangatahi and supporters!

We all enjoyed ourselves immensely. Kia ora koutou for your hard work, commitment and awhi!

 

After the show: tumeke rangatahi

 

Tino ataahua nga kotiro

 

Nga tane me te haka

 

Nga wahine me te poi

 

About to go on stage

Selfies before the show

Lining up for the stage

Stage entrance

Before the show. last almost everyone group photo

rangatahi and kai awhina before the show

WMB Emergency Relief Kai awhina

Rangatahi Kohanga at St James 2016

Our Kohanga and St James collaborated with St James College to present the St James Kapahaka at the school’s annual Cultural night. Throughout term 2 we have been hard as practising with students of St James with the support of staff from Wesley Mission Brisbane’s Emergency Relief Services in Fortitude Valley

 

Nga tane ma practising

Nga wahine ma

Walking on stage

Kapahaka lines

Waiata poi

Kai time

 

 

 

 

 

Rangatahi Kohanga starts up again for 2016…

Our Rangatahi Kohanga has commenced in term 1 of 2016 with a series of outings and activities. Our first outing was to Eat St where we enjoyed food, song and delights! Our final outing was to the City Botanical gardens where we celebrated with an end of term twilight picnic.

Rangatahi at gardens

Rangatahi at gardens

 

Our ropu at Eat St

Our ropu at Eat St

Rangatahi at Eat St

 

 

 

Matariki Wananga @ Kohanga

Happy Matariki!!

This week is matariki and each year we at Te Kohanga whenua hou celebrate matariki

Matariki is normally celebrated throughout May/June each year and this year, we celebrate on Thursday 18 June to 21 June.

At Kohanga we are celebrating with a weekend wananga from Saturday 20 June where we will be planting in our community garden; learning some new waiata and doing art and games. As always we also have the Brisbane Astronimical Society coming to the whare on Saturday evening for a viewing of the night sky.

Cost is $3 per child and healthy kai to share. Join us from 9.30am each day.

 

St James Kapahaka @ NZ workshops

Waiata whakaeke

Our St James College Kapahaka program recently performed at Wesley Mission Brisbane’s Emergency Relief Services in Fortitude Valley.

Poi

Poi

Centrelink and Dept Immigration & Border Protection have been providing information to NZ’ers about accessing income support and social services as well as citizenship and residency. WMB Emergency Relief, Centrelink, Immigration and Te Kohanga have partnered to deliver these workshops for NZ’ers and other groups marganilised by respective Australian government policy decisions on NZ’ers under the Trans Tasman travel agreement. Two workshops were recently held at the ER Fortitude Valley office where community came to hear from federal services about what NZ’ers can access.

Haka from our tane

The last workshop held on Thursday 4 June 2015 also included a performance from our St James College Kapahaka group who came to awhi community attending the workshop.

Waiata a ringa

Waiata a ringa

Rangatahi Kohanga St James Cultural night concert

Photo’s before the show

Our St James Rangatahi Kohanga program finally had their Cultural night concert last night which went spectacularly!

There were 50 performers including 42 rangatahi, 3 staff from Emergency Relief Services with Wesley Mission Brisbane and 5 Te Kohanga ote whenua hou team members. Our rangatahi were awesome. The ropu was not only the largest ropu present, but also highly diverse with many cultures and ethnic groups represented.

Rangatahi came from African, Aboriginal, Danish, Indian, Chinese, Sri Lankan/Japanese, Filipino and Australian backgrounds as well as Samoan, Tongan, Fijian, Cook Island, Tokelaun and of course Maori backgrounds. That’s 13 cultural groups represented in our ropu!

The participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students with other ethnic students – whilst commonplace within our organisation – is not so common within other ethnic groups. It’s a good example of the inclusion of both St James and Te Kohanga ote whenua hou in creating spaces for culturally safe and diverse activities where all are welcome and included!

At St James before the show

Some of our rangatahi…..tino ataahua wahine

Our partners from Emergency Relief Services with Wesley Mission Brisbane in Fortitude Valley also performed.

Tony, Jessie and Aileen from WMB ER

Tony, Jessie and Aileen from WMB ER

Thanks to Wesley Mission Brisbane staff who supported our kaupapa and gave up their lunchtime and after school time each week to come along and learn with students.

Rangatahi and our WMB learners all together

Thanks also to Oz Harvest and Wesley Mission Brisbane who gave kai for all students on Friday evening as they prepared for the performance. There were over 100 students who received healthy kai as a result of this awesome donation, so a big thanks to the team from  Oz Harvest for making it possible. And it helped all young people prepare for their big performance!

Our rangatahi performance was not only outstanding; it also raised the roof! From our speakers who introduced each item and their pepeha; to our waiata a ringa; poi; haka and whakawatea – he tino reka nga waiata me nga korero pai hoki…….. Well done to everyone who joined in on this night. And thanks to our kohanga team and St James staff who did a great job of organising, orchestrating and coordinating the night.

Waiting backsatge and singing along with the choir!

Offstage and performance is done….ka pai to mahi rangatahi…. ka tino pai!

First Performance @ St James

Garden launch

Our St James College Rangatahi Kohanga program recently performed at the Wesley Mission Brisbane Community Garden Launch at the Emergency Relief Centre in Fortitude Valley. Our rangatahi were tino tumeke in their performance

We only have our Cultural Presentation night performance on Friday night to look forward to! Good luck rangtahi ma!!

 

Poi

Last Lunchtime practise

Last Lunchtime practise

Last Lunchtime practise

Saturday Tamariki Kohanga returns

Flyer

Our Saturday Tamariki Kohanga program returns next Saturday 23 May 2015 at 9.30am

Saturday Tamariki Kohanga focuses on primary school aged children from 5yo to 11yo. However we offer the program to anyone committed to attending each week. We have nga pepe as young as 6 months who attend, and nga rangatahi up to 16yo. So anyone is welcome to come along.

The weekly cost is $3 per student and healthy kai to share. There is also an annual registration fee of $20 per whanau due each year. This fee is per whanau no matter what or how many programs your tamariki attend. We also ask whanau to commit to bringing their tamariki each week; commit to our values; participating in the annual clean up and assisting and supporting our fundraising efforts. We ask students to commit to our values and commit to attending each week.

Our Term 2 focus is MATARIKI which will occur on Thursday 18 June 2015. Each year our kohanga organises a wananga to celebrate Matariki with the Brisbane Astronomy Society bringing their telescopes to “Stargaze the night sky”. We will also be reading and learning more about Matariki, learning a new waiata a ringa and doing more art. Some come along next weekend as we start back with our Saturday program. See you all there!

Rangatahi Kohanga program @ St James College

Tane and kotiro showing their moko

Since Thursday 30 April 2015, whaea Johnny and I have been teaching the a short version of our Rangatahi Kohanga program at St James College in Spring Hill. Every Monday and Thursday lunchtime we have been teaching basic pepeha, kapahaka and reo games to students most of whom are Maori, Samoan, Tongan or Fijian with a few from Tokelau, Kiribati, Cook Islands, Aboriginal Australia and Denmark. Our classes only have 30mins to 40 mins over lunchtime (once students have had some kai, found the room we are in and settled in) which makes each class very, very fast!!

We have between 30-38 students who join us each time to learn, sing and dance. The program is a short program and will only run through to the Schools “Cultural Presentation night” on Friday 29 May 2015. We have a previous performance at Wesley Mission Brisbane’s Community garden launch on Tuesday 26 May 2015 to get the rangatahi ‘performance ready’.

 

Waiata

waiata