Ā Mātou Mahi - What We Do

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  We run pre-departure education sessions directly in schools, for rangatahi heading overseas on sports scholarships and contracts. These are the conversations that don't usually happen before a young person gets on a plane: how to protect their sleep and their fuel under pressure, how to read their own stress signals before they read you, how to find belonging in a place that doesn't know your name yet, and how to ask for help before you break (instead of after).

  Rising with Mana is Trina's Substack, written directly to māmā navigating this exact transition — honest, practical, and grounded in both lived experience and real qualification. Its companion guide, Rising with Mana, walks alongside the same twelve weeks our school sessions cover, so māmā and rangatahi are working from the same map, even when they're a world apart.

  Our five-year strategic plan is built around the Mana Futures Institute of Transition: an intensive, tikanga-led pre-departure programme for those who've signed with an Australian club. Where our school sessions plant the seed and Rising with Mana carries a whānau through the year, M.F.I.T is the full immersion — rangatahi arriving with a contract in hand, and leaving with the identity, discipline, resilience, and support network to make it last. Rugby league is where we start, because it's where the gap is sharpest and our own experience runs deepest. The long-term vision reaches further — a nationally recognised institute, extending to all codes as the model proves itself.