Jamie | Bayview, Auckland

“I think identity shapes everything. If you don’t know who you are and where you come from and what you’re about, then you don’t really know how to do anything. I guess my identity is just shaped through my whānau, just being who we are, and hanging out with my family and doing what we do. The traditions that grow. The traditions that shape and sort of reinforce who you are.

I am the youngest of three boys. We all went to church every week, and that was a big part of our identity, being a church family. As I’ve grown older, I’ve got married. I’ve been married. I’ve got two little boys of my own now and I think it’s really fun for me to shape our identity as our own family and to see my boys grow in their identity. They’re only little, but growing up and doing what families do, hanging out together, going for adventures, playing, that stuff.

I want to make sure that my kids have a really big worldview, a big world sense. I think even though we had the church upbringing, that sometimes it was a little narrow, so I want to make sure that my family gets to meet lots of different people, lots of different cultures, people from different walks of life and be able to be a part of a global community and recognising their part in it. To be appreciative of everybody and where they’re at in their walks of life.

My oldest is just about to turn four, and my youngest is about 10 months. I love being a dad. It’s certainly been challenging. Two has, has been different than one, but it’s just given my life a different meaning. People ask me, what did you do this weekend, and I just sat around and played with my kids. You know? It wasn’t anything particularly exciting, but it was still really fun and noteworthy and fulfilling I suppose, rather than going out for dinner, or going on some great adventure. It was just doing family stuff.

I grew up on the Shore in Glenfield, and went to all the Glenfield schools. I studied social work. I’m a social worker by trade. Moved out to Te Atatū in West Auckland for most of a decade and have only recently moved back to the Shore just to be closer to my family and my wife’s family, who are all over on the Shore. 

I wanted to do social work, because I wanted to help people, basically. What I learned is where my heart was. I thought I would be growing up an architect or an engineer, or one of those really clever jobs, but one I wasn’t clever enough, and two, it just wasn’t really what motivated me. As I grew older I realised that my heart was trying to help people, particularly those who just needed a lot more help. So at the moment I’m working with teenagers coming out of the care system, and helping them become young adults and finding their feet in a pretty tough world. It’s a big challenge, but I feel really proud of the work that I do and, and I hope that it has an impact.

What I’ve learned about myself was my life was really privileged, and blessed and lucky, and when I compare what I would often consider normal kiwi activities, there are hundreds and thousands of kids across the country who don’t experience those things. So, when I can say, we used to do this, or we used to go here and do those sorts of things, lots of kids haven’t had those opportunities, and so that makes me one, really grateful for the opportunities I did have, but two, really motivated to do  my best to provide those for the young people that I work with. Just trying to make sure that even the knowledge and the wisdom that I take for granted, can be shared with other young people, so that they’re not having to learn it on their own.”