PHOTO: NZ’s homelessness the worst in OECD – by far | Newshub
A woman who broke out of the cycle of poverty and homelessness she grew up in is helping a new generation of young Kiwis in need.
Māhera Maihi, founder of charity Mā Te Huruhuru, runs a 10-bedroom housing complex supporting young people in Ōtāhuhu.
“I was raised in south Auckland and my dad was a part of a gang and we had 11 of us in our whanau,” she told Newshub Nation on Saturday. “It was a very hard upbringing and we had to do everything that we could to survive.
“I remember part of our childhood was that we were hotel-hopping because we had nowhere to go. And I actually only remembered this a couple of months ago – so I had learned how to put memories into a box and hide them away.”
Her parents were “great”, she said, but were “part of a system and a cycle that broke them as well”.
“They loved us terribly. They just didn’t have the education to be able to give us everything that we needed.”
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