Welcoming Hoa Motuhake.

At Pathway Trust, we believe in the transformative power of social enterprise, a model that blends business with social impact. In 2017, we launched the Social Enterprise Hub to support emerging social enterprises and charitable initiatives. The hub provides shared workspace and essential business resources, like accounting, marketing, HR, and strategic planning.

We are excited to announce that Hoa Motuhake Sports Trust has recently joined our Social Enterprise Hub. Established in 2020, Hoa Motuhake is dedicated to empowering tamariki aged 8-12 years who face significant challenges, including those in state care or from high-deprivation backgrounds. Their mission is to remove the barriers preventing these young individuals from participating in sports, offering them mentorship, equipment, transportation, and access to community sports clubs.

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Through their Sports Mentoring Programme, Hoa Motuhake pairs each child with a volunteer mentor, providing over 80 hours of support throughout the first year. This is a key part of their work, as Program Manager Anneke points out.

“When the young people come in, they’re often closed off and shy, but also quite scared and untrusting, so it definitely takes an amount of time to build trust with their mentor. Usually this is achieved even just by showing up every week, because lots of them have never had a consistent adult in their life.”

Following the first year Hoa Motuhake continues to support each child for an additional four years, allowing them to continue playing community sports. They stay connected to the child, providing club registrations, payment of sports fees, equipment, back-up transport when required and regularly attend the child's sports sessions.

While Pathway and Hoa Motuhake operate at different ends of the spectrum, our shared goal is to break the cycle of poverty, violence and crime in Christchurch, so it’s an exciting partnership for us. Scholarship Manager Callum agrees.

“Having the same kind of mindset and values, and knowing that we’re all doing our best to support people is really cool. It’s great being in an environment like that, with like-minded people that we can bounce ideas off, it’s a really big advantage for us going forward.”

We look forward to supporting Hoa Motuhake as they continue their invaluable work in transforming the lives of tamariki in Christchurch.

If you’re interested in Hoa Motuhake’s work, there are several ways you can support them. Become a volunteer mentor, sponsor a child or follow them on social media!

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