I’m proud to say I had a small part to play in Pīwari te Kaitiaki, which took out a bronze in the Social Good category at the Designers’ Institute of New Zealand’s Best Design Awards.
My role was helping realize the translated version in te reo Māori, and it was an absolute joy to work alongside IDIA’s Lucy Shand, Natalia Spooner, and John Moore (not Johnnie Moore, I should note for regular readers of this blog). The concept, however, was already in place when I began my work on Pīwari, so admittedly life was made far easier by IDIA and the team at Health New Zealand’s Health Promotion directorate who had realized the English version in 2023.
The aim is to improve Māori childhood immunizations in Aotearoa. Contrary to what some believe, there is not an unwillingness by tangata whenua to have tamariki immunized. There are, however, systemic and cultural issues to overcome, and creating a book about immunization along with a maramataka—which, of course, is identical to my people’s lunar calendar, since our ancestors arrived at the same conclusions about time and year lengths—help get a more positive, trustworthy message out there, helped by health providers around the country.
On the same note, I helped out on the Asian Aotearoan Project when we celebrated Matariki, and they were very kind to acknowledge me when they posted this: