In 2023, students from Te Pā o Rākaihautū and Te Aratai College worked with researchers from the University of Canterbury and facilitators from Tokona te Raki Ngāi Tahu social innovation team to develop a student-led climate leadership response to address local flooding in the Linwood area. They called the research project Mana Rangatahi.
Te Pā o Rākaihautū Kaihautū Ripeka Paraone has been supporting the students through this research and linking it with their existing mātauranga Māori led sustainability actions in Te Pā.
“It started with a project called Para Kore where we were taught how to compost. We produce over 4 tonnes of compost a year which we use to grow food. We had this cycle of ‘from the garden to the table, from the table to the garden’.”
Te Pā then leased a nearby piece of land in the red zone and started restoring the soil and planting trees. They named this whenua Te Oraka, meaning the remnant/survivor/place of wellbeing. They observed this land over time and noticed how it would flood.



In 2018, Year 9 students from Hagley College and Year 5 and 6 pononga from Te Pā did a collaborative science study called ‘Water Warriors’ where they did some research into what was going down the drains and what naturally happened to excess rainfall without infrastructure. The students wanted to help solve the problem. “The kids learnt that the wetlands cleaned the water, they are like the kidneys of Papatūānuku,” Ripeka explains.
The relationship with the University of Canterbury and Tokona Te Raki offered the opportunity to work with rangatahi on some research looking into leadership and sustainability.
“We want to create the world our tūpuna dreamed of and our mokopuna deserve.”
“Mana Rangatahi is about celebrating the leadership of our next generation to solve the problems of this generation,” explains Sacha McMeeking, one of the head researchers in this project. She felt it was important that the rangatahi could “be Māori, do Māori, Māori styles” in this process. Māori and Pasifika young people already have pre-existing strengths and capabilities that can uniquely contribute to addressing complex climate challenges, she says. “In your kete, you’ve already got the skills and know-how.”
When asked what climate change felt like to the students, one kōhine said, with the mana of a true leader: “Sometimes I think it’s scary, but I can think of ways to help it and solve it with my mind.”




This pilot study trialled wānanga that took place in three steps, with each step building on the one before.
The first step unpacked community leadership strengths, through pūrākau. This storytelling and understanding of cultural strengths led to the ākonga thinking about their own leadership styles using digital mapping and illustration. Ripeka explains how the students identified their leadership style based on the qualities of atua Māori. “Tokona te Raki shared descriptors and characteristics of atua and the kids could identify what kind of leader they were by thinking about how they related to those qualities.”
One student said they felt like they were strategic and focused like Tāwhaki, another did things his own way like Māui, while one felt she was quiet but impactful, working behind the scenes like Rūaumoko. Drawing and writing activities allowed them to consider how these qualities could support them as leaders.
“It’s been awesome to see the kids connect with all these people from different walks of life and how open to learning from them they have been.”
In the second step, the inquiry focused on backcasting climate action pathways, a planning method that starts with defining a desirable future and then working backwards to identify tikanga and actions that lead us there. The students looked at values and actions that have sustained communities over time. These pathways were informed by NIWA’s regional climate scenarios.
Step three involved gaining an understanding of climate science. Sometimes unpacking climate science alone can be daunting. Having Melanie Myall-Nahi from NIWA bring her expertise as a Māori scientist to the project helped to make climate science feel relevant. Meeting with Māori scientists was really inspiring for the kids, explains Ripeka. “It shows them possible career pathways and it’s been awesome to see the kids connect with all these people from different walks of life and how open to learning from them they have been.”


Bringing the conceptual elements of the project into practical application allowed the students to feel connected to their pā wānanga and taiao and to begin to tackle local flooding issues in the community. They learned about what lobbying was and how working with other people and organisations of impact could amplify their voices.
The hands-on mahi was exciting because applying the science was so relevant. On discovering that the soil at Te Oraka could have been contaminated from the earthquakes, the students started to learn about how the soil of Papatūānuku is like her puku, and that healing the soil is like helping her gut health.
“We can’t dig under the ground because of what could be in the ground in a red zone after the earthquakes, so we have to build up,” says a student.
“There is water coming from the hills and rising from the sea so we need to build nodes to separate them,” explains another after spending time at Te Oraka with local kaumātua.
“If the students working on Te Oraka have the support to continue, they can literally save the neighbourhood,” says lead facilitator for Tokona te Raki Tonee Kana Fakahau.
“I feel like I can make a difference.”
Reciprocity has been key to the success of the project relationship, with the Deep South Challenge, and the University of Canterbury funding iPads for the students to use in their research. “It been an example of true partnership where there has been mutual benefit,” says Ripeka. “It is ultimately giving back to the kids.”
This ongoing mahi led eight senior students to submit their mahi ‘Te Puku Māra – an Indigenous Biocultural Technology project’ into the Zayed Sustainability Prize. They were selected as one of 33 finalists out of 5,980 submissions from 156 countries. With generous community support they were all able to take part in the award ceremony in Abu Dhabi in January where they found out they had won the prestigious global award.
Science and storytelling are innate in Māori and Pasifika cultural narratives and responses to challenges. It is a natural and uplifting initiative giving students a voice, a strategy and a pathway.
“We want to create the world our tūpuna dreamed of and our mokopuna deserve,” says Sacha of this approach of looking back to our ancestral knowledge while stepping forward led by the leaders of the future.
“I feel like I can make a difference,” says one student proudly, and that says it all.