Matariki 2021

Kia ora e te whanau,

Nga mihi nui for supporting our Matariki Celebration this week. I want to thank our guests and whanau for attending today's special assembly and hangi - including Ministry of Education Staff, Kainga Ora staff, our Board of Trustees, Brenda Macpherson from the Māori Achievement Collaborative and many others.  Our kids really stepped up and performed with immense kia manawanui and with pride for our kura. 


Also acknowledging Harko Brown for the Matariki history and practical lessons of using takaro and harekeke with our students earlier this week. 
For Friday our key acknowledgements are for folks that have made our matariki celebration event possible, firstly to our school caregivers and whānau who helped make the hangi kai for us today, starting at 7.00 am this morning (Jackie, Andrew, Villi, Ty, Arthur). The whānau team and staff were supported by 5 employees from the icebreaker company led by Scott who came to volunteer and they worked very hard as they painted, planted trees in our Matariki Garden, cleaned our shed and helped out with the hangi today. 
The amazing Wēteri staff spent the whole week supporting our kids to prepare and also put on an event worthy for our kids and whanau, led by Shelley, GTT team, Jo and Heidi who have helped set up the events this week and also whaea Max and Micaela for leading our amazing kapa haka. I must also acknowledge our Learning/support staff like Lola, Sarah, Rohini, Maddie, Doreen, Grant and Lopi who helped organise things behind the scenes including cleaning up. Mr Margetts came back to plant a few new trees with our kids too. 

Secondly thanks to our sponsors for their financial support and to help us fundraise for our new kapa haka uniforms. We were also able to give every student and our guests a taste of the hangi which is an essential part of any Matariki celebration after the performances. 
Our first main sponsor was @Skids Wesley who gave a koha to help with kai and they also help look after children after school 3 to 6pm and are now partially funded by MSD should you qualify. Please show them your support as they have been great to work with and would like more registrations. 

Kainga Tu Malosi and @GlobalHopeMission team also gave us a lot of support today and they are led by Lionel and Peter who continue to awhina our families in need in our Wesley Community.

Lastly I want acknowledge the support from @Tamakiprimary, Helen Varney, Haioti family, Tanovasa Family and Moses from Global for their time, koha and resources to secure the food from New World Mt Roskill and Bidfood NZ which we really enjoyed. 
Together our tamariki, kaiako and whanau have put on a very cool Matariki celebration and we did this to honour our special bicultural relationship with tangata whenua and so the special tradition of matariki continues to grow at Wēteri. 
Lastly thankyou for giving us your feedback on the teaching of Māori at our kura and also the new initiatives like our logo, kapa haka uniforms and new school entrance. We will endeavour to use your feedback with integrity and value it as best we can. 

We hope you enjoyed the Matariki celebration and we are thankful to finish this term with such an awesome collective celebration. Friendly reminder our learning and progress reports will be shared next week Thursday and  term 2 finishes on the 9th of July. 

Aroha nui 

Lou Reddy 
Tumuaki

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