"It is about building a regenerative economy and enabling organisations to have porous boundaries so that community is at the heart of this," Carey said. "It's about how we work together to enable community wellbeing."
Carey said the Impact Collective was not a delivery agency but a group that would work to create a collective "go-forward mentality" so that information, knowledge and resources can be shared in the community.
He said the initiative was being funded through the organisations involved together with the Ministry of Social Development's place-based initiative funding. The collective would become a charitable organisation to work with communities for charitable causes.
The Impact Collective is modelled on a number of social and economic innovation initiatives around the country, including the community-driven Waikato Wellbeing Project, Auckland Council's Southern Initiative and the groundbreaking Ruapehu Whānau Transformation Plan, launched by iwi Ngāti Rangi in 2013 to enable positive transformation for families in Raetihi, Ohakune and Waiouru.
The collective has grown from the Integrated Social Governance Leadership team that evolved from the community's Covid-19 lockdown response, which brought together councils, civil defence emergency centres, emergency services including ambulance and fire, the DHB, police, welfare teams and the Te Ranga Tupua iwi collective.
"The advantage of that was that we could literally sit across the table from each other and sort some of the issues that were coming to the fore," Carey said.
"We transitioned into the recovery space after the Level 4 lockdown, and we began to think what would this actually look like if we joined forces for the greater good?
"We also worked with private and social enterprise as well. We now have a governance team formed and are in the process of setting up a trust in order to incorporate this. But we've shifted from it just being hauora to ensuring that we're dealing with social, environmental and economic elements all under the same umbrella."
Carey said the Impact Collective is focusing on three key frameworks, the first aligning with the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which include reducing poverty and addressing inequity, gender inequality, clean water and climate change. The second framework agrees with the New Zealand Treasury's Living Standards Framework, which focuses on four capitals: cultural, economic, environmental and social. The third framework is being developed locally.
"We're in the process of having the conversations around whānau ora outcomes frameworks. What is it that we can understand not only from an iwi/community level but from a whānau and hapū level, to understand their wellbeing around these elements.
"We can then start working through true co-design with our communities around what are some of the things to support service delivery agencies as a result of the information and the intelligence that we've been able to glean from this."
The collective has also commissioned statistical reporting to establish an evidential base for decision-making and strategic direction, and expects to release the outcomes by June next year.
