Building on and increasing our impact requires working with others to improve homes at scale. One such community partner is Kootuitui ki Papakura, with whom we have been working together distributing Winter Warmer Packs to those in need of extra support this winter.
Sarah, who lives with her partner and five children describes the support, “I found out about Habitat’s Healthy Homes Programme through Kootuitui Trust. My partner was diagnosed with cancer last year.
He had major surgery and was in hospital for a week. I rang the school telling them that the kids wouldn’t be coming back because they needed them to be home to look after each other. The school put me in touch with Kootuitui. It started from there.
We received blankets and a heater from Habitat. The heater is awesome because it’s warmer for them when they go to hop into bed instead of it being a bit chilly.”
Sarah encourages others to reach out for help when needed, “It can be hard to ask for help. I think if people get offered it, they should accept it, they are there to help you.”
Kootuitui ki Papakura are a charitable organisation comprising a collective of community representatives including Manua Whenua, established in 2015 to provide services to a cluster of schools. Their purpose is to support whānau and schools to enable better life outcomes for tamariki.
Nane from Kootuitui said, “We have three strands: education, health, and whānau. Kootuitui means to interweave and come together. It is about uplifting our whānau and giving our children better opportunities to succeed, regardless of what path they take – lifelong learning journeys.”
We help prevent rheumatic fever within kids; we catch it early through swab tests. We also have our whānau strand and we were doing warm dry, healthy homes programme. This is how we made the connection with Habitat and started working alongside each other.”
