Te Rūnanga o Te Rarawa was established by its Northland-based marae to progress the spiritual, cultural, social and economic growth of Te Rarawa. They work to develop opportunities and initiatives for the future of their people and the protection of their lands and other taonga.
Te Rarawa had complex needs and along with wanting a new website, they also needed a robust membership system for their iwi. This would consist of a membership database, a member login, and email, all using sophisticated software that could meet the needs of a growing body. In addition, the system needed to have ease of functionality, flexibility to grow with them and a modern and appropriate design.
These components were critical in order to provide a means to manage the allocation of shares of Treaty Settlement payments for their 50,000 members.
How are they using MoST?
MoST’s Whakapapa Management System consists of a website; a Client Relationship Management system; and a Whakapapa Management (database ‘family tree’ management) system to track their tribes’ Whakapapa.
The Whakapapa Management system has been used to assist Te Rarawa with their elections, registrations, surveys, and communications with their membership.
With MoST being extensible, it has the ability to be modified to keep pace with the needs of Te Rarawa (which change over the years) and new features are created and added as growth and development of the iwi requires.
Building a new website was easy / straight forward and this was created using MoST software.
While the website was being built, a whakapapa model, like that of the European ancestry models which captures the family trees of Iwi members, was developed using MoST software. The MoST Whakapapa Management System differs from more traditional ancestry models by how family members are recorded. This creates a level of complexity not usually found in European ancestry systems.