Māori Issues
Te Karere

Hawke's Bay iwi launches budgeting service to boost community's prosperity

September 21, 2021
A mixture of New Zealand Bank notes and coins.

Treaty settlements continue to be a catalyst for iwi economic development. Once the Crown returns assets to iwi, they’re often placed in trust with a Post-Treaty Settlement Entity (PTSE).

By Bronson Eruera Perich

What’s not common, is that the iwi forms a budgeting service to guide their descendants.

Some 10 years after settling with the Crown, Ngāti Pāhauwera’s PTSE launched it’s own budgeting service in May this year.

Lockdown 2020 caused a massive spike in unemployment. But it also formed the catalyst of Ngāti Pāhauwera’s genesis.

Veteran budgeter Tania Huata was faced with unemployed in lockdown 2020, she decided to approach Ngāti Pāhauwera’s PTSE with an idea.

That idea was that the PTSE could form its own budgeting service to assist the iwi and the wider community.

“I approached Toro Waaka and Bonny Hatami,” Huata says.

Waaka chairs Ngāti Pāhauwera Development Trust and Hatami is a project manager for NPDT.

“Ngāti Pāhauwera Development Trust have a track record of supporting its members into business,” Huata says.

“Their leadership being approachable and inspirational.”

With their support and a funding injection from MSD, Ngāti Pāhauwera Budgeting Solutions was born . Their team of volunteers have helped 36 clients since June 1 this year.

These clients have amassed over $715,000 of debt.

Lack of financial resources to pay staff

The MSD funding helped NPBS setup the service.

But they have yet to be funded for operational costs like wages.

“We are limited at this time with… no financial resources to pay staff,” Tania Huata says.

But the fledgling budgeting service has 36 reasons to carry on, and in Huata’s eyes that’s more than enough.

SHARE ME

More Stories