Te Pū Harakeke was founded in 1971 as the Palmerston North Community Services Council, to bring together and provide support for Palmerston North-based community organisations.
- Read about how we began in Sharing Our Stories: 25 Years of Working in Community by John Thornley
- Read our 50th anniversary book, Te Pū Harakeke: 50 Years of the Palmerston North Community Services Council by Carol Phillips
Our membership is made up of over one hundred different groups working in the community sector. Our members are mostly not-for-profit community groups, but include businesses, education providers and government agencies who are working in the community space. We are an incorporated society, governed by our Constitution. Our Board is made up of elected representatives of our community group members.
Our Vision:
He rāngai hapori pakari, māia, honohono hoki ki te Manawatū.
A strong, vibrant, and connected community sector in the Manawatū.
Our Mission:
Kōtuia ngā pūmanawa, hāpaitia te mana hapori, amohia ake te ora.
Sharing strengths, empowering communities, championing wellbeing.
We do this through creating opportunities for networking within the sector, advocating for our members and issues that are important to them, delivering training and development programmes for staff and volunteers in the community sector, and through other programmes which help to build the capability and capacity of community organisations. You can read more about what we do here.
Key documents
- You can read our 2022/23 Annual Report here.
- You can read our 2024-2028 Strategic Plan here.
- You can read our Constitution here.
Our name
Pū harakeke
(noun) A [single] clump of flax; (idiom) Flaxroots, grassroots; an initiative or enterprise which emanates from the people or community.
The metaphor of a flax bush describes how we view the independent but connected member groups who form Te Pū Harakeke—Community Collective Manawatū. Like the shoots of te pū harakeke, connected at the roots, our collective aims to nourish, care for, and connect the many organisations in the Manawatū's community and social sector, and, like flax, is a resource which helps to sustain the community. The flax metaphor is something that the Community Services Council has used since the 1980s, as the title of our regular newsletter, Flax.
Hutia te rito o te harakeke, kei whea to kōmako e kō?
Ki mai ki ahau "he aha te mea nui o te ao?"
Māku e kī atu "he tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata."
If the heart of the harakeke was removed, where would the bellbird sing?
If I was asked "what is the most important thing in the world?"
I would be reply "it is people, it is people, it is people."
— Meri Ngaroto (Te Aupōuri)
In this well-known whakataukī, te pū harakeke represents different generations protecting and supporting each other. Te pū harakeke grows from the centre. The first shoot divides into the father and the mother, and between them a rito (child shoot) shoots up. As this continues to happen, the original parents become grandparents and so on, and you can have many generations in the same plant, with the older shoots protecting the newer ones. This serves as a reminder of the 50+ year legacy of community groups in the Manawatū being connected, helping each other get established and develop, and sharing strengths through this Collective. As we work together, we provide safe places for the bellbird, our community, to 'sing'.
We are proud to be members of
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