Waka wero- challenging marae to look out for their own

Waka Wero (vehicle challenge) is an initiative delivered by health provider, Te Taiwhenua o Heretaunga, and a handful of marae volunteers in the Hawke's Bay. It involves 10 marae putting forward one Waka Watch representative whose job it is to: oversee road safety issues, ensure members of the marae support each other to deal with those issues, educate using road safety resources and act as a contact for road safety campaigns run by different organisations. At the beginning of the initiative, marae nominated their Waka Watch representative and completed three Waka Wero projects. They underwent a road safety audit to identify issues, created a road safety theme waiata or haka and came up with a road safety catch phrase. This article explains this initiative in more detail.