Autumn 2025 Tairāwhiti Workshop Series
In July 2024, Kia Kotahi Ako worked with partners These Hands GSSE, Tolaga Bay Inn Charitable Trust (TBICT), and Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT) Adult Community Education Program to deliver a solar workshop series called Skills Builder II: Understand More About Energy and Get Started on Solar Technology, catalysed by the Edmund Hillary Fellowship (EHF) and We Share Solar.
In April and May 2025, the programme took its next steps into the Tarāwhiti (East Cape) community with a series of solar workshop events across the region under the umbrella of TBICT’s Slash for Cash programme, with added support from new partners, the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) and Eastern & Central Community Trust (ECCT).
CEO of These Hands, Project Coordinator of Slash for Cash, and Workshop Facilitator, Thabiso Mashaba, reflects on the recent series, working in partnership with Kia Kotahi Ako, and what it will take to provide the East Cape community with meaningful solar capability and energy resilience.
“We experienced a deadlock after last year’s workshops in Ūawa (Tolaga Bay), where we had provided a number of basic solar skills to the local community, but we didn’t yet have a technological vehicle that enabled them to build something of real value to them,” Thabiso says. This realisation led him to rethink the workshop delivery and develop an updated programme that prioritises practical solar applications and opportunities to leverage that knowledge to build local enterprises.
“Utilising and harnessing the sun rays for our community’s needs is beneficial to the environment, affordable to whānau, and we are not cut off from essential services.”
“Engaging the community well means getting them to think about their households, calculate the energy their appliances use, and build solar units that can power their real-world needs in a region where many people, by choice or by necessity, live off the grid,” Thabiso says. “Provoking that kind of thinking and seeing them go through a case study for their own homes really expanded the impact of the programme this year. I also introduced the business element, challenging participants to consider how much it costs to make a small solar kit with a charger, what they could potentially sell it for, and how many units they would need in order to sell multiple kits.”
Word-of-mouth interest and excitement around the 2024 workshops prompted a geographic expansion this year as well. Thabiso - with support from Kia Kotahi Ako Kaituitui (Project Co-ordinator), Te Waiora Wanoa-Sundgren - delivered the recent series of events in Uāwa, Ruatoria, Hicks Bay, and Wairoa. “We restructured the schedule of the workshops and went to more locations in order to enable more community members to participate,” he says.
It was awesome to head back up to Tolaga Bay and get the solar skills builder course underway again,” Te Waiora says. “Meeting the new whānau who came along and feeling their energy and excitement really showed how much this mahi means to our hāpori. This course was all about helping people learn new skills to support each other and build a stronger, more resilient future together.”
Another significant improvement this year was the addition of a solar-chargeable power bank, enabling participants to create a system they could put to use in their homes straightaway. “We found in previous workshops that access to necessary components was too slow,” Thabiso says. “If participants decided during their learning that they wanted to design and build a particular type of solar system, the pieces they needed to do that were only available online. This time, I introduced cellphone block chargers and preordered the components required to make them. Participants learned how to make their own charger and plug it into the solar kit. I taught them about the load system, how it can be worked and changed, and what solar and battery sources were required to capture and power the items they need.
“As people started making those chargers, which can power eight cellphones at 10 watts each, they started to consider what other things in their households they might be able to plug into the same amount of power. In a community where electricity is both very expensive and sometimes unreliable, the ability to power a device or an appliance with the necessary energy, even just from time to time, is critical. With the chargers and a greater understanding of power loadings, suddenly participants were able to imagine scenarios like: if I buy a 12-volt, 100-hour amp, that could power my fridge, and if I could power it just six hours a day, that would be enough to keep my food cool. This kind of knowledge and preparation is necessary for climate and energy resilience.”
“I learnt how to make a phone charger, and what it made me think about is the creation and the business side of things, making an earning and producing sustainable and affordable energy for yourself, whānau and community.”
Thabiso is committed to the continued growth of the Tairāwhiti solar programme and its impact. In particular, he wants to empower solar students with the knowledge and tools to deliver the programme to their own communities. “There’s a large demand for more training, and one of the best and most cost-effective ways we can support that is by giving our knowledge back to the community,” he says. “We’re currently exploring a follow-up series in Te Araroa, Rangitukia, Mahia and Nuhaka, which will include some train-the-trainer events. By equipping participants to support their own cohort of students, we can reach further and create energy resilience from within, rather than just coming in as outsiders trying to deliver that knowledge without the benefit of local context and vocabulary.”
“This approach reflects Kia Kotahi Ako’s wider vision of fostering energy sovereignty and equity within our hāpori,” Te Waiora says. “By empowering participants to become trainers themselves, we’re not just sharing skills, we’re building lasting leadership and ownership from the ground up. It’s about creating sustainable change that respects and strengthens the unique knowledge and identity of each community, so energy resilience is truly by and for the people.”
The key to building and maintaining impact will be consistency and a roadmap for future opportunities, whether that’s solar career pathways, the tools to train others, or the potential for local solar enterprises. “Consistency means so much to someone who is still building,” Thabiso says. “If you give someone a safe space to do that, you can’t then take that space away. Scaling deeply requires us to continue to support and follow up with next steps. We need to be returning to these communities with the resources they need to deliver training themselves and trial the technologies that are most relevant to them. And as the facilitators of that, we need the energy, solar, and legislative foundation to build as much as we can safely build without the need to enlist expensive specialist expertise. We may not be able to power whole houses without a qualified electrician, but we can power a router or a television; that’s how we’re using innovation to make life more affordable.”
“We’re rural and have a greater chance of being cut off from the mains power (Gabrielle), and this allows us to be able to power necessary devices for small water pumps, communication, etc..”
Kia Kotahi Ako shares Thabsio’s passion for supporting communities, and both partners agree that this type of practical, hands-on learning is necessary for strong, self-sustaining communities across Aotearoa. “The practical, hands-on mahi we’re doing with Slash for Cash fits perfectly with Kia Kotahi Ako’s vision of empowering rangatahi and whānau to lead sustainable change,” Te Waiora says. “This is how we build a thriving, resilient Tairāwhiti - by growing skills and leadership that will ripple out across Aotearoa for years to come.”
“I’m really grateful to be on this journey with Kia Kotahi Ako,” Thabiso reflects. “I think the mahi that we’re doing here with Slash for Cash aligns with the direction that Kia Kotahi Ako is going, and we look forward to opportunities to continue scaling deeply at a national level. To get to the next step, we need more resources, more trainers, more expertise. We need to show these communities that it doesn’t end here with a workshop. We want them to see this work in action beyond the classroom.”
To learn more and find out how you could contribute, visit https://www.kiakotahi.org/tautoko-mai-support-us or contact sarah@kiakotahi.org.