Sport New Zealand Ihi Aotearoa cares deeply about creating better outcomes for rangatahi in Aotearoa, and the role physical activity can play in their development and wellbeing. To contribute to these outcomes, Sport New Zealand sees an opportunity for rangatahi (ages 12-18) to be given more agency in designing the active spaces and places in their communities to ensure they meet their needs. Supporting organisations to co-design these spaces with rangatahi creates positive outcomes for rangatahi and the community beyond the final physical space.

This information has been created to support and provide guidance to organisations to increase their co-design capability. Our guidance has been created using the Mana Taiohi framework. Mana Taiohi is a bi-cultural, principle-based framework developed by Ara Taiohi, the peak body for youth development in Aotearoa. It informs how we can work with young people to support positive youth development. 

More information about the Mana Taiohi framework is available here. 

While co-design and consultation can often be confused, the key difference is the level of agency young people have over decision-making processes. Building young people’s sense of agency in a project – how empowered they feel to make change – takes time and investment. It requires building whanaungatanga (relationships) with young people, increasing their capability and confidence to step into a leadership role, helping them to make informed decisions and letting go of your own assumptions and biases.  

“Rangatahi needs are at the heart of decision making.”  

The value of co-design alongside the Mana Taiohi framework:  

• Uplift the wellbeing of rangatahi by engaging in mana-enhancing ways 
• Gain holistic insights into the needs of rangatahi   
• Empower rangatahi to take agency by providing leadership opportunities 
• Give rangatahi autonomy and control on the level of engagement they want to have with organisations 
• Create active spaces and places that meet the needs of rangatahi and the wider community 

“If [young people] say something that challenges what you think - my natural inclination was to try and steer them towards the outcome I was already trying to head us towards - fight that temptation! As much as you might want to be able to pin up a poster at the end of the day and say, ‘isn't this great, what we built, it's all these buzzwords’ that's the fastest way to create a space that’s going to sit empty 90% of the time”.