A reflection resource about Home for our communities

The kāinga team have spent the last couple years engaging with whānau, iwi, community leaders, housing and design specialists, students and architects to all answer the question – What does home mean to you? What makes a house a home?

We’ve learnt that what makes a home truly special is seldom its physical or architectural features. Instead, people speak of being close to their whenua, feeling the spirit and care of the taiao, laughing over kitchen tables, belonging to supportive networks, getting through difficult times, watching mokopuna learn, grow and laugh.

The strength of a good home is built on intangible foundations as much as it is tangible ones, it is the accumulation and expression of tikanga, whānau, relationships, values and experiences that make people feel safe and well.

However, while we have found this aspect of Home to be inherent in our way of living and seeing the world, people also shared with us the lack of opportunities there are to reflect on and understand these views and values in the bustle of our everyday lives.

Inspired by these insights, we are excited to soft launch a new resource that is designed to help people explore what Home means in their own lives. This printable reflection guide offers prompts that invite you to consider:

• What challenges inform our practice of Home?
• What values are important in your home?
• What spaces in a home are integral to your wellbeing?
• What tikanga kāinga protects your whānau?
• How can we look after the taiao at home?
• Who do we need with us on this journey?

You can use this resource alone, with your whānau or with a community group you work with. This resource is intended to offer a space for our whānau to pause, reflect and recognise what we sometimes take for granted, or to imagine what our dream home really means.

We welcome you to download, print, share and use this resource. We hope it serves as a reminder of the beauty and power of our relationships to each other, and to our whenua. We can’t always control our physical circumstances, but we can create the values, connections and aroha to sustain us.

As we continue to learn from our communities and whānau, we welcome your reflections and feedback. As we start to enter the Pākehā New Year we also invite you to consider:

What does home mean to you?

Download the resource here

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