Peter McKenzie Project

I’ve had the great joy of ongoing involvement in the Peter McKenzie Project, a philanthropic project focusing on systems change for whānau wellbeing (alleviating child poverty). Their participatory model of philanthropy is ground‑breaking in Aotearoa: a high‑trust model for working with and cultivating relationships amongst the Ngā Kaikōkiri organisations they fund.

The project has a rich visual metaphor of a flotilla of waka sailing in a shared direction. The flotilla ‘tethers up’ every six months for a Mahi Tahi hui, to connect and learn from one another in order to super‑charge the impact the flotilla as a whole.

Mahi Tahi VII, May 2024

For Mahi Tahi VII we were joined by Prof. Ingrid Burkett and Dr. Joanne McNeill from the Griffiths Centre for Systems Innovation.

The Peter McKenzie Project invited them here to share their experience in systems change from the Australian Context and to share Bill Sharpe’s Three Horizons Model.
Here is the wall drawing I created to interweave the Three Horizons model with PMP’s flotilla/moana navigation metaphor, along with the whakatauki gifted by our talented facilitator Trent Hohaia. We used this in the space as 3.5m wall print onto which the rōpū added their whakaaro.

Drawings from Mahi Tahi VII:

In this project the drawings form a durable visual record of the collective, and used to help on-board new people into the kaupapa.