Auckland mums behind the Eat Right, Be Bright campaign have turned to Massey University Human Nutrition and Dietetics staff and students for advice about the best types of food for children to improve their dietary intake during school hours.

The campaign, which was launched last month, aims to improve the health and educational outcomes for all children in New Zealand. Spearheaded by the Mothers United Movement (M.U.M), the group of more than 100 Auckland women are campaigning for the Government to provide fresh, healthy and nutritious lunches to all children at school and in early childhood education.

Professor Bernhard Breier, Chair in Human Nutrition, Associate Professor Rozanne Kruger and Dr Marilize Richter from Massey’s College of Health, along with a group of 17 second year Master of Human Nutrition and Dietetics students, have drawn on previous work done in South Auckland schools around meal programmes for children, to provide expertise for a framework for the proposed model.

Professor Breier says childhood obesity, malnutrition and related health issues in New Zealand have increased immensely over the past few years. “This is linked to the current food environment which promotes over-consumption of inexpensive, highly palatable, energy-dense and nutrient-poor foods.”

Massey’s Human Nutrition and Dietetics Team has a long-standing commitment to improve nutrition during the all stages of childhood and development. “Our own research in South Auckland indicates that school meal programmes can have a clear impact on children’s dietary intake, especially when they are combined with strategies that reduce access to unhealthy discretionary foods,” Professor Breier says.

“Experiences overseas clearly show that school is an ideal setting to improve access to healthier meals while addressing socioeconomic disparities and inequalities. Some of the most promising evidence from Europe suggests that access to healthier meals during childhood results in improved educational achievement, occupational status and health outcomes during later life,” he says.

M.U.M was conceived when three mums, Cassie Slade, Becky Little and Clarissa Mackay found themselves discussing the need to end child poverty in New Zealand. The team enlisted the help of nutritionists and dietitians from Massey University’s School of Sport, Exercise and Nutrition, whose research underpins the need for this campaign.

Cassie Slade, who is currently studying her Masters of Human Nutrition at Massey, says it was vital the campaign was underpinned by strong scientific evidence.

“The expertise and knowledge provided by the team at Massey has been invaluable. The team have helped us shape our ‘Framework for Implementation’ document which provides a clear vision of how a school lunch programme could work in New Zealand. They have also given us practical assistance by allowing the dietetics students to conduct an assignment providing us with scientifically researched content for our social media,” Mrs Slade says.

The Human Nutrition programme at Massey clarified the major nutrition issues facing society today and stressed the importance of looking to rigorous scientific research when trying to find the answers to these big issues, she says. “It highlighted the importance of good nutrition from a very young age and how vital it is to change the food environment to make effective change. We are trying to make the healthy choice the easy choice and by doing this we can change outcomes for New Zealand children.”

One in four Kiwi children are living in poverty, a third are overweight or obese and one in three children admitted to Starship Hospital are malnourished. “School food programmes are one of the most effective ways to break the intergenerational poverty cycle, with children who are well fed being able to learn better and therefore make the most of their education,” Mrs Slade says.

“That is why most countries around the world have some sort of school food programme. The fantastic thing about school food programmes is they have been shown to improve health and academic outcomes for all who participate but they benefit those who need it most the greatest.”

Since the campaign launch people from around the country have been contacting them to get involved in the campaign and offer support. So far, more than 2,000 people have signed their petition asking the Government to provide a daily fresh, healthy and nutritious lunch to all kids in school and in early childhood education.

Massey PhD candidate Fahad Alammad is researching business diplomacy.

Sceptical of ‘megaphone diplomacy’

To establish a social media presence and influence views and perception, different governments and ministries of foreign affairs engage in digital diplomacy. For example, Sweden, the United States, France, and the UK have created multiple social media channels in different languages directed toward diverse regions to defend and promote their countries’ interests. Some of these channels attract hundreds of thousands of followers with millions of interactions from all over the world.

In comparison, the government of New Zealand’s only official social media account is not verified or actively seeking to communicate directly with either a foreign audience or foreign governments about its news and stories. New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT) is increasingly using social media channels but the channels are in English, and not necessarily innovative and customised. As a result, these channels do not generate the engagement and influence aspired to by digital diplomacy.

MFAT’s chief executive Brook Barrington said this about digital diplomacy: “New Zealand has long favoured the benefits of modest and moderate collaboration…and being sceptical of megaphone diplomacy”, so it’s no surprise its social media efforts, so far, have been understated.

But digital diplomacy should not be viewed as a form of megaphone diplomacy. Rather, it should be used as a tool to actively communicate, engage, and promote New Zealand’s interests worldwide and to tell the stories of who we are, what we are doing, and why we are doing it. Universities also have a role to play in training politically astute and media savvy graduates in the art and science of digital diplomacy.

Looking forward, I believe the government of New Zealand should actively seek to increase its global presence in social media by creating different channels across various platforms in multiple languages. These channels need to be run by enthusiastic and interactive people who truly understand and appreciate the uniqueness of New Zealand and express it in a way that other parts of the world can recognise.

In the long run, the government of New Zealand, and its various ministries, need to actively engage in multi-language e-diplomacy to spread information about New Zealand to the rest of the world. These activities can only serve to enhance New Zealand’s reputation and promote its interests globally in different areas of public life, including tourism, education, politics, and research.

New Zealand might be isolated geographically, but there is no need to insist on being virtually isolated as well.

Fahad Alammar is a PhD candidate at Massey’s School of Management. His PhD thesis is focused on empirically investigating the concept of business diplomacy.

Coinciding with International Women’s Day on Thursday, senior lecturer Dr Negar Partow and tutor Nicola Macaulay from the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at the Wellington campus, have teamed up with the group including the non-governmental organisation ChangeMakers Refugee Forum, to offer the women new to Wellington the opportunity to try a new skill and meet others in a similar situation.

Cycle trails and simple obstacle courses will be set up at Kilbirnie Park as instructors from Revolve, ReBicycle Wellington and MUD Cycles, take the women through the cycling basics.

This year, similar events will also be held at The Esplanade in Palmerston North and the Sandringham Road extension in Auckland.

Undertaking such an activity was a great way for the women to take their minds off their own struggles to re-settle at a time when the plight of refugees and rising nationalism dominate world headlines, Dr Partow says.

It also highlighted Massey’s relationship with the city’s NGOs and wider community, and hopefully signalled to other Wellington businesses the importance of engaging in social activism.

“Settling into a new culture and facing the challenges of adapting to a different way of life can be incredibly stressful for former refugees who have fled conflict and destruction in their home country,” Ms Macaulay says.

Dr Partow adds: “Participating in social and sporting activities allows diverse communities to interrelate and exchange ideas about some of those challenges.”

Ms Macaulay says the main point of the cycling morning was for women to come together and have fun.

“Agencies have come together to make these opportunities possible. It’s important that organisations do more of this and reach out to refugee background populations.”

Dr Jason Mika researches Māori entreprenership and is co-director of Te Au Rangahau, Massey University’s Māori Business and Leadership Research Centre.

Booming Māori economy

Not since the burgeoning tribal economies of the first half of the 19th century, when surpluses from hapū-based (sub-tribal) enterprises sustained settlers and tribes, has entrepreneurship been viewed as an appealing possibility among Māori.

Until recently, being Māori and an entrepreneur was an anomaly. The mainstay of Māori livelihoods since the 1930s was employment in labouring jobs in “salt of the earth” professions such as construction, forestry, fishing, health and education. Yet, appetite for entrepreneurship is growing among Māori.

The Māori renaissance brought forth support for other forms of Māori-centred policy. Kōhanga reo (Māori language preschools), kura kaupapa (Māori language secondary schools), and wānanga (Māori tertiary institutions) are examples of successful Māori-centred initiatives in education. There is also acceptance that Māori health models and practitioners are needed to improve Māori health. The official recognition of the Māori language as a taonga (treasure) led to the institution of Māori radio, television and spectrum to sustain it.

Māori ingenuity in business

While Māori ways of thinking and doing were becoming increasingly normalised within health, education and the media, the same acceptance was not apparent in commerce and industry. For instance, few Māori business leaders in the 1980s and 1990s could easily point to their equivalent of Māori health’s “te whare tapa whā” (four dimensions of health) as a model of how Māori do business. 

The power of enterprise to transform Māori lives was embraced when a decade of Māori development was set in motion following the Māori Economic Summit (Hui Taumata) in 1984. Within its remit, enterprise development was identified as an important means of realising Māori aspirations for self-determination.

Somewhat against the tide of the then government’s withdrawal of direct support for industry, a number of initiatives to assist Māori enterprises were established following Hui Taumata. Some of them still exist today, including Poutama Trust and Māori Women’s Development Incorporated. 

Among many examples of successful Māori business leaders are Business Hall of Fame inductee Mavis Mullins, iMoko innovator Dr Lance O’Sullivan, Kono chief executive Rachel Taulelei, animation entrepreneur Ian Taylor, horticultural robotics entrepreneur Steve Saunders, Federation of Māori Authorities chair Traci Houpapa and 2017 Young Māori Business Leader of the Year Blanche Murray. All are exemplars of a rich vein of modern Māori entrepreneurship, integrating Māori and Western capabilities to create value. 

One of the most respected British photographers of the last 25 years, colour landscape specialist Jem Southam, delivers a public talk organised by Massey University’s Wellington College of Creative Arts on Saturday.

Professor Southam will be delivering the annual Peter Turner Memorial Lecture at Te Papa’s Soundings Theatre on Saturday March 10 at 6.30pm. His lecture titled Landscape Stories: Encounters, Voices and Pictures will address the complexity of the landscape genre in the light of his own career as a photographer, whose work results from the patient observation of singular sites, usually near where he lives, over long periods of time.

Professor Southam’s work has been the subject of many solo exhibitions dating back to the 1980s at venues including the Victoria and Albert Museum and part of international collections featured in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Museum Folkswang, Dusseldorf and the Yale Centre for British Art at New Haven.

As Professor of Photography at Plymouth University, Professor Southam has developed a method of slow accrual of images, which are then presented in structured narratives revealing a complexity of personal, political, literary, psychological and cultural associations.

While now working digitally, much of Professor Southam’s work has been made using a large format camera to produce 8 x 10 inch colour negatives. This is a slowed-down time-consuming image making process that requires patience and precision. When the resulting large format negatives are then enlarged to create c-type prints, the images reveal an extraordinary level of detail and degrees of tonal subtlety rarely matched by contemporary digital means.

The annual Peter Turner Memorial Lecture is hosted by Massey University, and each year brings to New Zealand an international photographer, theorist or historian, to discuss their work in the expanded field of contemporary documentary photography. The lecture was established in memory of the late Peter Turner, author, editor, curator and former teacher at the Wellington School of Design. Whiti o Rehua – The School of Art also offers a Masters scholarship in documentary photography in Peter Turner’s name.

Distinguished Professor Anne Noble from the School of Art says Professor Southam is a notable addition to the list of photographers who have previously headlined the lecture.

“In a world where our experience of time is shaped by the traffic of instant photographic images on social media, Jem Southam’s slowly accrued photographic narratives of singular places as us to stop still and reflect on environmental change within much larger and longer time frames.”

Professor Southam’s lecture is part of Wellington’s biennial Photobook New Zealand Festival that showcases artists’ photobooks published by New Zealand and international small presses at a photobook fair at Te Papa on Friday and Saturday March 10-11. The New Zealand Photobook of the Year Awards will be announced at the Festival launch on March 10 at 7.30pm.

The Peter Turner Memorial Lecture is on at 6.30pm, Saturday March 10, Soundings Theatre, Te Papa, Wellington. Go to www.photobooknz.com for more details