Te Taiwhanga Rangatahi

 Who we are

Te Taiwhanga Rangatahi is a collective of seven young designers from south Auckland focussed on transformational change.  

We operate with a tuakana-teina model with four rangatahi who joined us from Manurewa High School, three tuakana experienced in careers, wellbeing or mātauranga Māori and with engine room support from The Southern Initiative. We’re nested in Auckland Council but based in Manukau with a geographical focus on rangatahi in south and west Auckland. 

We came together as part of a 12 week design training experience in school at the start of 2021 and were employed as Junior Designers at Auckland Council at the end of 2021.

Our approach

We use participatory and indigenous design thinking to find solutions that work for other rangatahi– like in education and employment.  

We do this by helping Government, Council and business understand rangatahi, through rangatahi. 

We create safe spaces for rangatahi and adults to design solutions that will make Auckland a more equitable and fair place to grow up.

 How

We work in two ways to create transformational change:  

1. Understanding rangatahi through rangatahi: We work on our own design challenges on topics that we care about and those that we know Government, Councils or businesses are struggling to solve. 

2. Turning youth voice into action: We work with peer changemakers to accelerate their thinking in order to focus on the most powerful and influential actions they can be taking.
   We do this by facilitating their problem solving using an indigenous design framework, the Hautu Waka. This creates a safe space for rangatahi to problem solve through decolonising the design process.

Context for young people

Rangatahi are our future. They are our future tax payers, climate changers, politicians, builders, artists and creators. They have dreams and aspirations, insights and ideas, answers and solutions that are not being heard.