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Empowering Māori career and employment aspirations so that our whānau can flourish.
Why Ora works collaboratively to empower Māori career and employment aspirations so that our whānau can flourish!
We don’t only work with rangatahi, we work with whānau of all ages and stages.
Once you register with Why Ora our Kaiārahi team will work with you to identify your aspirations, connect you to information and opportunities and provide you with support throughout your study and career journey.
To help inspire and connect our whānau to future careers, we run exciting hands-on programmes for secondary students, including Rapuara Hauora; our health careers exposure programme and Pūtaiao, our science expo.
We also connect whānau with employers to create skills development opportunities, including Mātaki shadowing, cadetships and internships.
We work right across Taranaki, to grow the Māori workforce, improve whānau incomes, and help create change so that our whānau can flourish!
OUR VALUES
OUR VISION
OUR MISSION
OUR VALUES
Our values talk about who we are, how we go about our work and what people can expect of our organisation:
Matatika: we strive to do the right thing, we are ethical; unbiased, honest, and fair in our dealings with each other and all people.
Whanaungatanga: we acknowledge everyone’s uniqueness, promote sharing, strengthening of connections and capacity, collaboration and working together.
Manaakitanga: we genuinely nurture, encourage, respect and care for one another.
Āta Mātai: we are adaptable and open to new ideas. We are courageous and use our creativity to continually improve and explore better ways of doing things.
OUR VISION
Māori are active participants in the Taranaki workforce, across government agencies, services and industry. This is reflected through their respective workforces in which Māori are equal in proportion to their population share, working across all occupational groups.
OUR MISSION
To provide an ongoing supply of skilled and qualified Māori for employment into the Taranaki health and disability clinical and nonclinical workforce; and
To work with relevant partners in other agencies, services and/or industry to act as a co-ordination point for profiling career opportunities for whānau and streaming the potential workforce into their preferred career option pathways.
The symbolism behind our logo
Our logo identifies three main focus areas central to our purpose of empowering Māori career and employment aspirations so that our whānau can flourish:
Tūhononga : Manaakitanga : Umanga
Connections l Support l Careers
Tūhononga – Tū is to strengthen, hononga is to bring or join together – weaving together our connections for the greater vision of flourishing whānau.
Manaakitanga – whānau are at the core of what we do – supporting and nurturing our whānau on their career journeys.
Umanga – means careers – supporting our whānau on their career journeys – we connect people to career pathways.
Our name: Why Ora – ‘why’ is curious and questioning– while ‘Ora’ means life, health, vitality and wellbeing!
As the word “why” is english and “ORA” is Te Reo Māori it is important there is a space between.
This break is created by leaving ‘why’ a regular weight, while placing a bold weight on the ‘Ora’, thereby placing the emphasis on the Ora.
The O in “ORA” creates a perfect circle, a shape associated with totality and wholeness, the self, timelessness, and all cyclic movements.
The koru is the original design within kowhaiwhai and is often used within health design. It is renowned as the original symbol of growth – from inception to infinity.