Te Hononga ki ngā Tūpuna Trust was set up in June 2008 for adults to learn te reo. Manukau Institute of Technology had closed its full-time te reo programmes at the end of 2007 and some of the Trustees, who had been teaching and otherwise promoting use of te reo rangatira for many years through formal tertiary education institutions, had become increasingly concerned that their structures and procedures discourage many from pursuing their interest in becoming conversationally fluent in te reo.

We had an enthusiastic teacher of te reo in Manu Collier so now we needed a place for the learning to happen. Thanks to St John's Church in Ōtara and Te Tai Awa o Te Ora Counselling Agency we were able to make a start with an unused triple garage. This involved up to dozen volunteers sawing, hammering, painting, fixing wiring and plumbing, fetching second hand doors and furniture and carting rubbish – all to to make the space habitable in four weeks.

Our first courses began in September. We had planned to offer two streams of a programme comprising 4 courses that would take a year to complete, targeting absolute beginners; however there were so many who couldn't attend in the daytime that we added a night class for 6 hours a week.

From what was behind that old door ...

To this awesome space ...

An Update for 2009
We ran four courses in Otara between July and December 2008 and these were rated very highly by participants. In fact, we offered a level two course to run alongside level one earlier than intended because the learners did not want to wait until 2009 to continue. Most of the learners from the introductory courses wanted to carry on. So 2009 started with a bang - between February and July we ran another seven courses and built up a waiting list for our night class.