A new gen­er­a­tion step­ping up to lead

MP Mari­a­meno Kapa-Kingi returned to Hamilton to cel­eb­rate a new chapter at Kirikiri­roa Fam­ily Ser­vices Trust, wel­com­ing chief exec­ut­ive Jaye Wainui and reflect­ing on the trust’s 26-year jour­ney from idea to insti­tu­tion.

Sit­ting inside Kirikiri­roa Marae, Kapa-Kingi recalled the early days when a hand­ful of com­munity mem­bers, “just reg­u­lar people doing ordin­ary things” dared to ima­gine a future they could build with their own hands.

She remembered writ­ing the ori­ginal trust applic­a­tion with War­ren McGrath, Wikuki Te Uranga o Te Ra Kingi and oth­ers, and the care taken in choos­ing the name. “Get the name right, and you shape the future,” she said.

She spoke of the early child­hood centre next door, the carving by Kuki Junior, and the small details that laid the found­a­tion for a kaupapa now sup­port­ing hun­dreds of whānau. “What I see here in the likes of our mokopuna elev­ates it to another level. We are nav­ig­at­ors then and now,” she said.

Look­ing ahead, Kapa-Kingi said the next era requires cour­age from marae boards, iwi organ­isa­tions, regional bod­ies and gov­ern­ment agen­cies. “Young heads and old heads, you need both. Bring them to your shoulder now so that when the old heads leave, the young heads become them,” she said.

Board chair­per­son Rachel Steph­en­son said Wainui’s appoint­ment was “obvi­ous and earned.” “He’s cre­at­ing a job that is his own. Our role is to sup­port his vis­ion and some­times slow him down.”

Wainui spoke young Māori about his jour­ney as leader, once believ­ing

lead­er­ship meant con­trol and firm orders. Over time, work­ing with kaimahi and whānau taught him a dif­fer­ent les­son. “The real power has very little to do with con­trol. It lives in something far less glam­or­ous: kind­ness. The kind that stead­ies a room and keeps people safe enough to hear the truth,” he said.

He urged other emer­ging Māori lead­ers not to harden them­selves to sur­vive. “The world doesn’t need another gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers who can endure pain without flinch­ing. It needs lead­ers who can feel and still move for­ward.”

Pay­ing trib­ute to those who shaped him – teach­ers, aunties, whānau, his part­ner, and his par­ents – Wainui closed with the prin­ciple he intends to lead by: “There are three import­ant things. The first is kind­ness. The second is kind­ness. The third is kind­ness.”

Kapa-Kingi watched from the front row as nearly three dec­ades of kaupapa found a new voice.

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Source: https://www.pressreader.com/new-zealand/the-waikato-local-228p/20251203/281517937427909?srsltid=AYCX9vLHkzlsT6OfqZV0O43B3W59cTPNwC6kLcbkZwX6bHQUKhlYfSL1