Tēnā koutou katoa!

This webinar picked up important threads from our previous webinar - on behavioural change and story-telling - and followed them through to the East Coast/Tairawhiti after cyclone Gabrielle.

This webinar was presented on Wednesday April 10 at 7pm.

Renee Raroa is the Director of East Coast Exchange, which was established in response to Cyclone Gabrielle to help deliver funding to frontline communities for response and recovery actions in Tairāwhiti.

Renee is of Ngāti Porou whakapapa and grew up on her whenua at Te Kautuku in Rangitukia, where she is supporting the development of a large-scale regeneration project that will prove a new investment model for climate action on whenua Māori. She also co-founded the Exchange Cafe and Te Weu Charitable Trust which supports community-based climate research in Tairāwhiti.

Credit Gisborne Herald for the photo.

The East Coast Exchange supports a verifiable open record of actions taken in communities that might otherwise go undocumented. Once verified, these records qualify for funding from open and tagged funding pools. There are no additional reporting requirements or application forms beyond the first listing, removing some of the barriers community members had reported in accessing funding existing traditional mechanisms.

One year on, in response to its community's needs, the East Coast Exchange has evolved to support a vision of regional regeneration by growing a verifiable open record of climate and nature-positive action. Activities such as native planting, pest control, waste reduction, increasing water resilience, food sovereignty, and climate leadership are now all recognised actions on the East Coast Exchange.

Funders have had input by requesting tagged funding options to meet their charitable purposes, such as the Rangatahi Climate Action Fund created in collaboration with Our Climate Declaration and the Jeanette Fitzsimons Climate Action Grants.

In this webinar, Renee described two pilot projects they are launching. These will see funding from multiple funders staked together to support climate action collectively, engaging government, corporate, and philanthropic funders. These projects will enable farms and land blocks to build new data assets to diversify their revenue streams.