Te Punanga Oraanga Matutu, a new NGO dedicated to supporting and solving domestic problems regarding men and their families, held their first workshop on Wednesday at the New Hope Church.

Close to 20 people attended the workshop, which was led by Miles Chase.

Chase presented his programme centered around self awareness, self discovery and self development. They aimed to focus on allowing the participants to share their awareness of where they’ve come from, their background, what makes them happy, and being aware of what’s around them in their country so they can make links to what is personal to them, their education, their families, children.

Participants were able to fill out worksheets which got them to really pin down and talk about different elements of who they were including family, education, and achievements.

Chase described the workshop as an introduction to the type of work the organisation was hoping to present to the rest of the community.

“We want to invest in building people up to be a bit more resilient and empowered. It all starts with ourselves. Once we get ourselves right, we are ready to take the next step to deal with things like anger, depression, anxiety and stress,” he said. “It’s all about being positive. Everything you start to think about ends up becoming your words. Your words become your actions. Actions become your habits. Habits become your values and morals.

“We still have a long way to go, and are going in little steps but we’re just trying to expose a bit more to people so that they can comprehend and understand what is going on, then they can invite others and we can provide support to those who really need it.”

Te Punanga Oraanga Matutu president Temu Okotai said that the name of the group was inspired by the idea of “improving the welfare of families”.

Okotai said that although the group targeted men and men’s issues, they welcomed women and families to also come for support. The aim of the group is to find solutions to family problems, focusing on the males who contribute to these family problems.

He described their approach as holistic. “It’s not just a men’s problem, it’s all the relationships that surround a person’s behaviour, including their history with relationships, and many types of pressures which all contribute to the development of violence in the family.”

“The needs in our community are huge. You can go anywhere and see families that are struggling,” Okotai said. The goal of the organisation he said was “happy, stable and productive families”.

Rebeka Buchanan from the Punanga Tauturu – the supporting organisation which focuses mainly on women and children and the elimination of abuse and violence against them to build safer communities – is the secretary of Te Punanga Oraanga Matutu.

“There is a real need for our men to have something like this,” Buchanan said.

The workshop on Wednesday was more of a trial run to look at the programme that the presenter had and to see where improvements could be made before they share it with more of the wider community.

“It’s very general and broad but a good start,” she said.