Bringing West Auckland voices to the table

As part of our focus on advocacy, Kai West has joined Healthy Auckland Together, a coalition of more than 20 organisations working collaboratively to create the conditions and environments that enable everyone in Tāmaki Makaurau to live healthier lives.

In July, we joined a wānanga with the coalition to look ahead and think about what we can achieve together over the next 12 months. The session was an opportunity to step back, share ideas and explore the opportunities that come from working collectively as an action group.

Together, we identified four key areas of focus for the year ahead:

🔎 Build the evidence – strengthening research and gathering evidence to better understand the issues affecting health and wellbeing and support informed action.

🌿 Strengthen governance – strengthening collective leadership, relationships and ways of working across the coalition.

📣 Collective advocacy – bringing our voices together to advocate for the changes needed to create healthier environments and address the wider conditions that shape wellbeing.

📢 Raise community visibility – increasing awareness of the issues that affect health and wellbeing and making the coalition’s mahi more visible across communities and Tāmaki Makaurau.

For Kai West, being part of this mahi is an opportunity to raise or West Auckland community voices, bringing a food systems and food resilience lens into a wider movement for healthier communities. It also strengthens our connections with others working across Tāmaki Makaurau to shift the conditions that shape people’s everyday lives.

This work is about planting seeds for change, nurturing relationships and growing something stronger together. We look forward to contributing to this shared mahi over the year ahead.