As you know, this newsletter is a space to let decision-makers like yourself know what The Hive is hearing from young people across the country. So as your friendly local amplifier of youth voice, we’ve got lots of news in store for you this month. We’ve been meeting fortnightly to organise our insight-gathering processes, and we’ve even been sitting down with the Minister himself.
In this newsletter, you can check out:
You can find out about it all here, as well as learn about other cool ways you can centre taiohi voice in your mahi. We’re glad to have you as part of this conversation, so thanks so much for listening!
As part of our co-design process over the last three months, we went out to taiohi all over the motu and asked them:
The results were interesting, motivating and showed a deep care and concern for the issues that are front and centre for taiohi. Responses spanned the climate crisis, healthcare, justice, public spaces, transport and Te Tiriti. But one thing remained consistent throughout the range of policies our Prime Ministers would focus on, and that was the future. The future is always in sharp focus.
“I would invoke a law to keep rents low and build at least 10,000 social houses across the country, since Aotearoa has such a low rate of social housing.”
“I’d reverse the change on smokefree – this decision makes no sense and it’s just a cash grab.”
“Sustainability, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, equity, and actually solving problems at the root cause, rather than band-aids. And yeah, ambitious climate action, decolonial foreign policy, universal basic income, constitutional transformation based on Matike Mai, land back, that kind of stuff.”
“I would reverse the ‘back pocket boosting’ – I don’t care for an extra $30 in my pocket, it would be better for society if someone who actually needed this money got it.”
“Put a tax on carbon, but supplement it with a Universal Basic Income to make it equitable. Ban synthetic nitrogen fertiliser.”
“Improve the health system especially with regards to specialists, wait times, benefits, funding and conditions that are complex or rare, and decreasing medical costs by increasing the healthcare professional pool.”
When we had our first 2024 Hive workshop back in March, the creative ideas were overflowing. So we’ve decided to experiment with ‘The Hive Creates’ as an occasional part of our Hive newsletter.
The Waters That Flow Over Us is a poem by one of our Hive Season Four tuakana, Eilidh Pūrewa Huggan. It speaks to the true lived realities of the climate crisis, especially for whānau Māori.
A large part of our work over the last few months has been meeting fortnightly to design our insight-gathering mahi with taiohi across the motu. The information we gather will help shape things like our social media content. We thought it might be cool to share a bit more about this co-design process, as it may help you when you’re considering partnering with young people (or with us at The Hive!)
First things first: while every kaupapa will look slightly different, whenever we meet with young people, we ensure the process values their time and energy and positions them as the expert in their own experiences. For this particular process, these were some of our other considerations.
What did we want to find out?
We wanted to discover what was on top for young people at the moment, and what they wanted to understand about government.
How did we do this?
When designing the best ways to engage our communities, we thought about how we can ask the questions we want to find answers to, and we considered what settings best meet taiohi where they’re at and in ways that work for them.
Where did it take place?
We had kōrero with taiohi in our communities both online and in-person. We had pūtea to cover a coffee, dinner or whatever we wanted to do – making sure this was a reciprocal exchange for our friends and community who were sharing their time, kōrero and energy with us.
What was the outcome?
This insight-gathering process has shaped a large part of our next phase of work, informing our newsletter content, upcoming in-person events and helping to shape our social media content.
Last week we had a great meeting with Minister for Youth, Hon. Matt Doocey and started what we hope will be an ongoing relationship. We shared insights we had gathered from our communities and it felt meaningful to be able to speak honestly with the Minister about the things we’d been hearing.
These were our three key requests for the Minister:
We really valued this opportunity and we’re looking forward to continuing our relationship with the Minister for Youth!
The ReVision Initiative is about creating real ways for local young people to have their say on places and spaces in their communities. ReVision have tools that both young people and planners can use to help create youth-friendly places and spaces.
In the past year, the Citizen’s Advice Bureau helped around 5,000 young people with information and advice. In this really useful resource for decision-makers, the Citizen’s Advice Bureau provide a summary of the most common areas of enquiry for young people, which are also reflected in our own insight-gathering process this month.
If you’ve not taken a look at this report we highly recommend a read! Youthline’s latest research underlines many patterns that we’ve also found in our insights – that economic uncertainty, environmental concerns and mental health persist as dominant issues for young people.
If you’re a public sector decision-maker, we can help you engage with young people and centre their perspectives in your mahi. Whether it’s about gathering insights about what’s on top for taiohi, or gathering youth perspectives on policies or reforms, we love finding ways to support your work, and helping to ensure the voices of taiohi are front and centre.
You can find more info on the different ways we work here, and feel free to get in touch with us any time!
