When Ropu (Ngāti Porou) retired from Auckland Council and moved to the city, she knew she was looking for something specific in her life — though she wasn't sure exactly where she'd find it.
"I felt the need to belong to something," she says. "It needed to hit me emotionally as well as my Te Ao Māori side.”
She found it, unexpectedly, on Hobson Street.
Walking past HomeGround, the Mission’s central city hub, early one morning, she could hear waiata coming from inside. The next morning, she heard karakia. When she came in to the Mission and met some of the team, "I knew I'd found what I was looking for. I was looking for somewhere to belong. I found that community here."
Ropu began volunteering in Haeata, the Mission’s community dining room, serving freshly cooked, nutritious meals to street whānau three mornings a week.
She remembers her first shift clearly: "When the whānau were coming through, it felt just like a marae. You're serving kai, you've got a smile on your face and then it’s all go."
Like a marae, everyone is welcome at the Mission and our community reflects the diversity of our city.
Ropu finds a connection with every person who walks through the door. “I see them come in and I think ‘you remind me of somebody that I know’. It could be my uncle. Some of the young ones remind me of my moko - they’re cheeky, they’ve got a smile on their face. The kuia in the corner, you remind me of my mum.”
Ropu has now been volunteering in Haeata for almost two years, and because she shows up consistently, week after week, she's built genuine relationships with the whānau.
“I'm not going anywhere. I'm coming back tomorrow and the next day and the next week. They get to know you, you get to know them. And then after a while they're calling you Whaea.”
“The first time this young fella called me Whaea, I thought, ‘Yeah, this is where I belong.’”
For Ropu, every shift in Haeata is full of laughter: “You have belly laughs every day. You laugh yourself silly. Sometimes I’m laughing so loud I can't hear myself think. The laughter is contagious. It's joyful.”
Two afternoons a week, Ropu also volunteers at Good Stuff, one of the Mission’s op shops, where she helps sort the donated clothing and uses her sewing skills to mend clothes ready for sale.
There’s lots of laughter at Good Stuff too. “The radio is going, we're singing along. They’re so connected and funny. You're having heartfelt conversations and a lot of laughter. It's a really awesome, lovely vibe.”
At Good Stuff, she’s putting her passion for crafting to good use. When an old Swanndri jacket arrived with moth holes, the manager challenged her to save it. “I thought, ‘how can I pretty that up?’ I knew that it needed to be something about our ngahere, because of the green and because of the purpose of the Swannies.”
She's upcycled donated blankets into cushions for sale at our Karangahape Road shop and used donated patches to mend pre-loved jeans. “It gives a real sense of pride when they sell!”
The staff, she says, are what make the Mission special. “Without their manawa, their heart, it would be such a different place. The staff have whanaungatanga in their hearts. They're so connected with each other and they share the same kaupapa. They believe that we're all equals, that we're all the same.”
And they make sure every volunteer knows their contribution makes a difference:
“Every shift I hear from the staff how valued the volunteers are. In the morning, it’s ‘Mōrena Whaea!’ And when you leave at the end of the day, ‘We couldn't have done it today without you!’”
For Ropu, volunteering at the Mission is not about giving back. It's about reciprocity.
“It's about being part of something, and it's about sharing. I'm getting back as much, if not more. It's a two-way street.”
And being part of the Mission has helped Ropu feel at home in the city centre community:
“When I'm out and about, I see whānau and they nod at me — ‘Kia ora, Whaea’. I might run into one of them at the supermarket and they acknowledge me. Without the Mission, I wouldn’t have that connection. That’s pretty cool.”