Ki te Ara Whakamua: Māori Community Action Fund to reduce alcohol and other drug (AOD) harm.
Growing up in the Bay of Plenty, Chris Rānui-Molloy (Ngāti Manawa) witnessed first-hand the impact that unemployment, mental health challenges, and AOD harms had on his community. Combining his lived experience and his passion for community well-being, Chris founded Recovery Street in 2018 as a kaupapa Māori AOD-based performing arts service to help whānau and hapori Māori find alternative pathways to well-being.
New Approaches
Recovery Street was created as an alternative to western psychotherapeutic treatment centres. Taking a creative approach to engaging Māori in a support group, it fuses mātauranga Māori (e.g., karakia, pōwhiri poutama, pūrākau, and whanaungatanga) with western approaches such as trauma-informed care, psychodrama, and theatre therapy. Recovery Street works alongside whānau Māori who have lived experience of AOD and mental health to give them the opportunity to express their own story on stage. The programme draws on Chris’ lived experience and his aspiration to help whānau Māori on their own hikoi to hauora.
Recovery Street demonstrates the Ki te Ara Whakamua Māori AOD Community Action Fund objectives of mātauranga and wānanga. Participants shared that they feel they are able to express their own pūrākau and healing pathways in a way that traditional counselling or group therapy wasn’t able to. Chris and the Recovery Street whānau received pūtea from the Community Action Fund in 2023 to hold a wānanga to explore the next steps of the kaupapa, including building their tikanga and frameworks to continue to keep the whānau they work with safe. New programmes are planned for Tāmaki Makaurau and the Bay of Plenty in 2024.
Ki te Ara Whakamua: Māori AOD Community Action Fund is open for applications again until 15 March 2024. If you have an innovative idea like Recovery Street to support whānau and hapori Māori with AOD challenges, apply here: https://wharetukutuku.com/aod-fund/
Photo credit: DAPAANZ, 2023
