NZTE staff from around the world gathered at Tukorehe Marae as part of their introduction to New Zealand.
NZTE staff from around the world gathered at Tukorehe Marae as part of their introduction to New Zealand.
Tūkorehe Marae has hosted an international delegation of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) staff, based around the world, who are helping raise the profile of New Zealand and especially that of Māori businesses.
It was organised by Te Pora Māori, the Māori Business group within NZTE.
“New staff come here as part of their induction and visit different businesses and marae across the country. Here in Kuku they spent two days on the marae to experience our culture up close,” said Raukura Hoerara-Smith, who is an export customer advisor for NZTE based in Auckland.
She hails from Kuku, as does New Zealand’s Taiwan Trade Commissioner, Tina Wilson, and the director of Māori partnership, Jamie Te Hiwi.
Raukura Hoerara-Smith works in Auckland while Brazilian Mariana De Carli is based in Saudi Arabia.
“This programme facilitates Māori business capability and is held four to five times a year. All these people represent New Zealand around the world and they are from the USA, UK, Singapore, Australia, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia. Many of these attendees have not been to Aotearoa before,” Raukura Hoerara-Smith said.
They are introduced to the country and its peoples and shown how they can help improve business for New Zealand businesses around the world. They learn about the Treaty of Waitangi and the historical grievances and how that has affected various iwi, they talk about Māori investment and the Māori economy and are shown the value of the Māori asset base, which is primarily in primary industries, including forestry and fisheries.
Kaumātua Lindsay Poutama brought the group a very local perspective. The team spent two days at Kuku, but the entire programme takes them around the country and lasts a week or two.
NZTE staff experience a Kiwi beach during their induction training.
One of the participants is Mariana De Carli, who hails from the Amazon region in Brazil, but lives and works in Saudi Arabia, promoting exports for New Zealand. She’s lived and worked in the USA, UK and spent time in the Middle East, where she picked up Arabic. “I have been in Saudi Arabia for two years and seven months,” she said.
Mariana is a business development manager and promotes New Zealand to Saudi businesses, but also works in Bahrain and Oman. “There is a strong relationship between New Zealand and Saudi Arabia, predominantly because of long-serving educational initiatives. New Zealand has trained a lot of Saudi air traffic controllers, for example, and the first Saudi woman to go into space recently was educated at Otago University.”
She said many Saudi citizens who have spent time here have positive feelings towards us. “We also have a lot of shared values. Saudi prefer to deal with companies that are values-driven, including businesses that are family-owned.”
Mariana said this was her first visit to New Zealand and she has been blown away by what she has seen and heard - though Aotearoa was not totally unfamiliar to her. Her sister moved here in the 1990s and lived with a Māori family for a while, who subsequently visited Brazil. “We are from the Amazon region and part of a first nation.”
She said she could already see many options for co-operation and sees lots of similarities. “It is incredible to see how another first nation group works.”
She said she has already hosted Māori-owned companies in Saudi Arabia. “The way Māori do business, such as starting meetings with a mihi, resonates with Saudi, because that is what they do.”
Mariana said she worked in Dubai in UK trade relations for a British multinational for a few years, which is when the NZTE job in Saudi Arabia came up.
