Communities around New Zealand are mobilising to 'rescue our young' from being lured into youth gangs. In the second of a five-part series, Simon Collins reports on Ihumatao, Mangere.
When Tristan Waipouri was growing up in the small Mangere community of Ihumatao, police cars were regular visitors.
Several families in the community of about 200 people, clustered around the Makaurau Marae in what was once a market gardening area off Ascot Rd near Auckland Airport, were associated with either the Mongrel Mob or Black Power.
Ihumatao was a classic example of a once-thriving community that broke down in the 1980s, allowing gangs to flourish.
Today it is also a small but shining example of a community that is now pulling together again to give its young people a better future.
"Back when I was growing up, the parents wouldn't stop the kids from doing what they wanted to do," said Mr Waipouri, who went on to work as a youth worker for the Tamaki Ki Raro (South Auckland) Trust.
And Paula Roberts, a local parent who chairs the board at Mangere Central School where Kirkbride Rd crosses the airport motorway, agreed.
"When Tristan came up with his idea of this Mangere Making A Difference (MMAD) programme for our kids, we had a lot of attention from the police regarding a lot of our young people getting into trouble," she said.
"We couldn't see a path to help them. We are all one whanau here, but you can't turn round and say to your cousin, 'You're not doing enough by your child'."
It didn't use to be that way.
"This area was originally agricultural. We spent all our time after school in the gardens during the summer," Ms Roberts said.
"Out here you didn't have to lock your house when you went to sleep at night. You could leave your keys in the car.
"Back then, if you did wrong at aunty or uncle's place, they would turn round and boot you up the bum. If my child did wrong, I would expect you to discipline my child."
As Ms Roberts recalls it, things began to change in the late 1980s. Vegetables became cheaper to buy at the local supermarket than to grow locally.
By about 2002, about half the residents were unemployed. And Pakeha spouses marrying into the community threatened to call the police if their children were disciplined by aunts and uncles.
"That made our older people think, 'You can't do it any more'," she said.
Young people took advantage of the looser rules. Ms Roberts estimates that by the middle of the past decade, 70 per cent of the community's 14- and 15-year-olds were no longer in school.
"We had a lot of theft and tagging going on out here, and under-age drinking," she says.
The community itself took the first steps towards turning this around again. In the late 1990s, Ms Roberts' parents started waka kopapa races, a traditional Maori single-hulled canoe sport that is practised mainly in the Waikato.
Makaurau Marae's Te Puna Matauranga (Spring of Learning) subcommittee, chaired by Ms Roberts's sister Edwina Pirihi, started a homework centre and a kohanga reo. A kapa haka group continued even through the bad years.
Then in 2005-06, a spate of youth gang-related violence caused a panic in Wellington. Ministers threw $10 million into a four-year programme in South Auckland, including six youth workers and an integrated case manager at the Tamaki Ki Raro Trust for Mangere.
Bill Peace, social services manager for the trust (which recently changed its name to Strive Community Trust), says youth groups are running in Ihumatao and at other sites around Mangere.
The Ihumatao programme includes sports, dance, cooking, water safety and outings all over the region.
When Mr Waipouri took the youngsters to the historic military tunnels on the North Shore, 10 out of 25 of them had never been across the harbour bridge.
"It was like, 'What is this place?"' he said.
When he gave them water safety lessons he found that many young people couldn't swim.
Keri Olsen, 16 at the time, said: "It changes your attitude. It made me come out of my comfort zone and be able to stand up in front of everyone in group discussions."
Mr Waipouri even found jobs at a Coca-Cola factory for several of the older ones.
Ms Roberts says the community decided that only youngsters who attended school could join the programme.
"It's been a huge change," she says today. From a situation where most 14- and 15-year-olds were wagging school, she knows of only one young person in the programme who dropped out of school for a year before returning.
Several children from gang families have now gone on to university.
Despite the recession, most adults are now working. "The freight industry has boomed down here," Ms Roberts says. "Our theft rate out here has come down a lot."
Young people say only a handful of local youths still hang out in the local youth gang - youth leader Ike Rakena puts the number at fewer than 10 "out of a community that holds more than 100 youth".
Ms Roberts credits the turnaround partly to the youth programme. But she says the community has also stepped up: "It's some of our parents getting more involved with all of our rangatahi [youth], not just the ones in our immediate families."
Paddling towards a brighter future
If you had the choice of paddling in canoes on the Manukau Harbour or hanging out on the streets with nothing to do, what would you choose?
It's fairly obvious, put that way, that the Ihumatao community latched on to a winner when residents returning from the Waikato revived the traditional Maori sport of waka kopapa (single-hulled canoe) racing just over a decade ago.
"I love doing it, and just seeing all my cousins - this is how we get together," says 15-year-old Reuben Roberts.
"They come because they enjoy it," says team manager Ike Rakena. "If they enjoy it, it's not hard to get them to practise."
About three-quarters of Ihumatao's school-age youngsters practise every week in summer, based at a jetty built after the old Mangere sewage ponds were opened up to the sea in the years up to 2003. Their season climaxes in a big regatta at Ngaruawahia in March.
Mr Rakena opens and finishes each training session with a karakia (prayer). Alcohol, drugs and cigarettes are banned.
"We can't determine what they do outside," he says. "But they know when they come here, they are the rules they have to adhere to."
THE SERIES
Monday: Otara.
- Veteran youth worker never gives up
- Sport takes sting out of Killer Beez
- Social investment pays off in peace on streets
Tuesday: Ihumatao (Mangere).
- Village blooms as kids steered away from crime
Wednesday: Manurewa/Clendon.
- League building girls' trust
Thursday: Kawerau.
- Fighting for a better future
Friday: Kaiti (Gisborne).
- Growing sense of pride erodes mob's influence
