Leilani | Māngere

“I’m passionate about people. I’m passionate about my community. I’m passionate about the youth of this community, the people of this community, the elderly people.

I’m passionate about people excelling in life, and taking a step up in life, making a difference in their life. I’m passionate about raising the bar.

I’m also passionate about youth, about making a difference, seeing children grow from being naughty to being wonderful, young men and women. It’s about changing the dynamics or helping people get out of the hole, and rising their levels. Here in Māngere, we have a lot of troubled youth, but I know that many of us here in Māngere can make a difference, can help those youth, can show them the way, or create a pathway of light, by giving them or showing them how to write their own CVs, helping them get into employment, following up with them, and saying, hey how are you doing? I suppose those are success stories from Māngere. A lot of youth struggle. Families struggle, but what are the tools available to them? I should say, come to the local library, we have access to employment classes, we have digital computers where you’re able to learn, we have classes running out of our library, computer classes, we have driver licensing classes that are running out of our library, we have wonderful staff that are willing to help our community. I’m passionate about people succeeding, and I’m passionate about giving back to my people here in Māngere.

So my role in Auckland Council is I work in Libraries and Information System. So, I tautoko and manaaki, and awhi the Māori community, or Kura Kaupapa, support schools, Kura Kaupapa, Kōhanga Reo, and mainstream schools. I’m passionate about people’s learning. I’m passionate about people stepping up, accelerating in life. In our library where we work, we offer to the community, access to employment. We help our community find jobs. We help them with their CVs. We provide tools so that they can succeed. We also have driver licensing classes that run out of our library, also. So, it’s a community hub.

Currently, with the pandemic of Covid-19 we also support Spark Jump modems, which means that low income families that do not have Wifi in their home, are able to get the free modems, and it’s also about children gaining access to Wifi so they can do online learning, and they can go into Google Classroom and complete their homework, while we have this pandemic happening.

I grew up here in Māngere. I went to Viscount Primary, Arahanga Intermediate. I went to Māngere College, but I went to uni overseas. So, I went to Brigham Young University in Hawaii. I suppose this is my way of giving back to my community, hence why I’m passionate about my community. By working in my community, I’m listening to the voices of my people, in my community, and I’m trying to make a difference.”