Manukau City Council: Manurewa Marae Web-raising

Manukau City Council’s Community and Economic Development Unit is looking for a tool to enable Marae, complementary small businesses and community members in Manukau to create and strengthen Marae community networks and act as a support system for Marae-based initiatives.

The initial phase raised awareness of how ICT and the Internet can become a tool to enable community processes at the Marae and with the broader Marae community. The second phase includes running workshops for Marae community members to build digital content and acquire valuable ICT skills to develop and administrate this community-built Website.

The Manurewa Marae website went live in August 2007 - www.manurewamarae.co.nz. NZTRI/AUT received further funding from the CPF, which helped fund a series of workshops to train users and develop further content for the site. The first workshop, a youth workshop, was held in November 2007. It provided pages for the school Te Wharekura o Manurewa and allowed students to work together on the website. The other 2 workshops were held in early 2008. One focused on training staff at Manurewa Marae, the other was for community members who wished to participate in development of community content for Manurewa.

The project is now in its final stages and an Evaluation Report is currently being written for project completion.