Mana Wahine | Te Ora Hou Ōtautahi

‘Mana’ has many meanings, including: authority, charisma, prestige, integrity, spiritual power and strength. ‘Wahine’ at its simplest and most common understanding means woman/women, female and wife.

The combination of the two can be loosely defined as ‘woman of strength’.

The Mana Wahine programme which is specifically aimed toward Māori and Pacifica students, works to develop the ‘Mana’ in our ‘Wahine’ by providing a safe place for views to be shared, questions to be asked and opinions to be valued.

THIS PROGRAMME IS DELIVERED IN SCHOOLS DURING SCHOOL HOURS

Mana Wahine is all about fun interaction and conversation. We use a variety of different methods to communicate our learning outcome for each session while interacting with participants and creating conversation.

Techniques Include:

Activity Based Learning – running activities that have specific learning outcomes that create conversations on the topic of that session
Multimedia – using magazines, videos, movie clips, cards, diagrams, art therapy etc to communicate ideas in a fun and interactive way
Sharing – facilitators share stories from their own lives in an open and honest way
Journaling – wahine use a journal to document their projects and lessons learnt from each week. Journals are given back to girls to keep at the end of the programme for them to look back and reflect upon

This is all delivered by trained and qualified female youth workers, who will journey alongside and mentor (building trust to provide immediate support and encouragement) each of the young people on the programme.