Call Te Piki Oranga 0800 672 642

Galen King

Ending period poverty in Marlborough

Let’s talk periods! 

It is a fact of life that sanitary supplies are a necessity that many wahine go without. More than half* of Kiwi women find them too expensive, with a third prioritising buying other items like food and nappies for tamariki over the purchase of these products for themselves.

Worringly almost 30% of teenagers aged below 17 years old have missed school or work because they have their period and don’t have sanitary items. This is gender inequality, pure and simple. Our rangatahi should have no barriers to going to school or work.

Over the past 12 months, Te Piki Oranga in Wairau has had the privilege of accessing support through Pink Packets. Pink Packets is a women-led Marlborough charity providing free sanitary items to women in need throughout the region. Their mission is to end period poverty in Marlborough by collecting donations of sanitary products and putting together packs to be distributed through local agencies.

We are so grateful for the mahi these wahine toa do for our mothers, sisters, daughters, and wider community of women in Marlborough. Ka nui te aroha to you Pink Packets!

If you are in Marlborough and wanting to contribute to the fight against period poverty, please look out for the pink donation bins around local supermarkets and visit the Pink Packets Facebook page for more information on how you can help.

If you know someone who needs help accessing sanitary products in Marlborough, please do not hesitate to contact our Wairau office or contact the ladies at Pink Packets directly on the contact details below.

www.facebook/pinkpacketscharity

email: marlbwomanscentre@gmail.com

phone: Milinda 027 389 7816

Whānau give back to their community and work on their wellness

Whānau give back to their community and work on their wellness

In August this year, our Wairau team started to run the award-winning Te Pae Oranga programme with the Police, with successful outcomes in the first month. 

Rather than ending up in court or a cell, Te Pae Oranga is an opportunity for people 17 years and over to repair the harm their minor offending has caused their community, and to have health challenges addressed. Te Pae Oranga is credited with bringing an 11.9 percent fall in reoffending among Māori aged 17 to 24.

People who have perhaps shop-lifted, stolen a bike on the street, or driven without a license, meet with an Iwi Community Panel to talk about who they are, where they are from, and why they did it. The panel listens and uncovers any unaddressed issues, before agreeing to appropriate reparation and accessing health services for the offenders. 

In its first month, the Wairau Iwi Community Panel worked with 21 people, mostly aged between 18 and 25 years old, with great success. Two examples of reparation for minor offences include a fisherman giving Te Piki Oranga 20 kilograms of fish for whānau in our Wairau community who need food. Another person has committed to assisting a local rugby club with coaching. These are positive outcomes that are appropriate to these people and their offending, and are meaningful to the community.

As well as working through how people would repair the harm they caused, the panel identified a number of undiagnosed or unsupported health problems, such as mental health or drug issues. Links have now been made to appropriate services to help them get better. 

Addressing the underlying reasons for offending is an important part of the holistic Te Pau Oranga process, rather than incarceration, after which, the statistics show, it is highly likely that people will reoffend.

Te Piki Oranga has been running Te Pae Oranga for 26 months in Whakatū, with more than 200 people having successfully worked with the local Iwi Community Panel.