It really was people coming together for the community as more than 100 people and 30 community organisations came together for the launch of Waka Whakamua.
The ceremony, which took place at the Holiday Inn today, was opened by toastmaster Kingi Biddle and featured waiata from pupils of Te Kura o te Koutu.
It has been a two-year journey and the combined effort of many to arrive at the unveiling.
Rotorua's Bella Moke, a member of the Maori Women's Welfare League, is the chairwoman of the Waka Whakamua steering committee.
She held back tears as she spoke to the crowd about how pleased she was to finally reach the point of launch.
The Waka Whakamua is made up of 30 providers, businesses, churches and organisations focused on working together to deliver services supporting and strengthening youth, whanau and the wider community.
Mr Hawkins said the aim was to deliver social services en mass, as a whole community.
"It's really easy to work with the barely broken families, because that looks good for the statistics, but we're not interested in that.
"We want to help the most needy whanau."
The six focus areas are health, employment, community, whanau, faith-based and crime. Within each focus area, a key issue has been identified through extensive research.
After Mr Hawkins spoke at the launch a representative from each of the collectives discussed the specific issues they plan to address.
These issues include homeless solo parents, children in Koutu lacking basic necessities, obesity in Maori aged 25 to 44, unemployment of 20 to 24-year-olds and Maori male offenders aged between 20 and 29.
Faith collective representative Scott Clifford said it had been easy to convince community groups to come on board.
"It is a service of the heart."
The service ended with the ceremonial cutting of a cake to officially launch the collective.
