MAS Foundation: Making sure nobody is left behind during COVID-19 with Paerangi

MAS Foundation is MAS's philanthropic arm, and takes a Te Tiriti o Waitangi partnership-based approach to funding projects that address health and wellbeing equity issues in Aotearoa. MAS Foundation is committed to working alongside communities to help them find their own solutions. 

In this series, we profile some organisations and initiatives MAS Foundation has supported, and find out how partnering with MAS Foundation helped them make an impact.

Supporting Paerangi

Created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic with support from MAS Foundation, Paerangi is a unique information and referral centre for whānau hauā (people with impairments). The world-first platform shares information in plain English, te reo Māori and New Zealand Sign Language, linking users to support services across Tāmaki Makaurau-Auckland.

Tania King (Ngāti Awa) has worked in the disability sector for almost 30 years and brings to the space her experience caring for her mother for 15 years, as well as whānau takiwātanga (Asperger's/Autism Spectrum Disorder).

Paerangi was created by Te Roopu Wairoa (a support organisation founded and governed by whānau hauā), Te Kotahi a Tāmaki (collective of marae in Tāmaki Makaurau), and Te Ohonga (network of kaumatua and Māori health advisors), who quickly realised that mainstream and government COVID-19 responses might not make space for the disability community. 

Statistics suggest Māori with disabilities are less engaged in mainstream health services, says Tania, and in the 1918 influenza pandemic, for every Pākehā death, seven Māori people died.

"When COVID arrived in New Zealand in March 2020, organisations and government departments were trying to get a handle on this pandemic. Everybody was doing a whole heap of stuff, but we realised early on that nobody had put a service menu together with the disability community in mind," she says.

"We knew that we wouldn't be able to visit people, and that content needed to be either available by telephone or via a digital platform. As it wasn't an area we had a lot of expertise in, we started hunting for partners."

The group started approaching potential partners, particularly those who understood the health sector for Māori and ended up establishing Paerangi with around 45 contributors from various organisations. 

How does Paerangi support its community?

The team built a website designed for the disability community in Tāmaki Makaurau, to help whānau access health and wellbeing services. It assists users to find vaccination centres, access mental and physical health services, find food banks and get help with housing problems.

The site is available in simple English and te reo Māori and includes videos in New Zealand sign language. Paerangi also has a Facebook page and Youtube channel to help its content reach more people. 

"By making information culturally relevant and disability accessible, everyone could use it. Our goal was that the content could be used by any population, and we had 58,000 visits in the first month, which for the disability community is significant traffic," says Tania. 

The Paerangi team quickly realised that by making its platform inclusive, it could reach people from a range of different communities around Aotearoa, as well as the disability community. 

"We have been disappointed with the perceptions of disability in this country. I think there's often lower expectations for a group of Māori with disabilities. But Paerangi is the first platform of its kind in the world, not just in Aotearoa, and we're now putting a lot of effort into upgrading it."

Tania and the Paerangi team are now trying to secure more government funding to help them ensure their website and social media platforms can be kept up to date as COVID restrictions change.

"We've got to make sure our most at-risk and marginalised populations are at the front of the queue, not at the back."