Faith Family Connect - Pastor Carla Perese
I am Carla Perese from Faith Family Connect and Te Pera Mahi Oranga Trust. I currently have 2 roles. For Faith Family Connect, I am the Senior Pastor or Senior Elder of the church. For Te Pera Mahi Oranga Trust, I am the CEO or Lead of the transitional housing project.
Currently at Faith Family we’re working with The Kai Collective providing food support and finding sustainable ways for families to be able to meet their needs around food sovereignty. It’s currently voluntary work, so a lot of our people are volunteers. We also have our church services. A lot of our services are online at the moment because of COVID-19, but we’re just slowly coming back.
Te Pera Mahi Oranga Trust is where we do social housing. We’ve just started a project with the Tāmaki Regeneration Company (TRC), and we have a whole lot of little transitional housing “villages” that will be coming alive soon. We’ll also be doing a salvage yard in about a month’s time which we’ve partnered up with TRC and Localized, where all the deconstructed material coming down here in Tāmaki will be sold-off, repurposed, and reused. A project to minimize waste.
Faith Family and HEART’s relationship first started with my parents [Matua Tom & Whaea Margaret]. When my father was the Senior Pastor of the church he had formed those relationships with Puamiria and the Sisters. My parents were a part of the “It’s Not OK” campaign and had their photos taken and put on posters, and were among the first people to be part of The HEART Movement.
Once I took over in 2015, I carried on and maintained that relationship because I knew of The HEART Movement, but I wasn’t engaged like my parents were. It wasn’t until I took the Senior Pastor role where I started building my own relationship with HEART. Since then, our relationship has just grown.
The HEART Movement is about building healthy and strong relationships within the community, and Faith Family Connect supports that Kaupapa. We’re about building our community as Peter Thorburn says, “We hold the hope of people, until they can hold it themselves”. When I first heard that, it really struck a chord in my heart, because that’s what we have to do. We need to be able to provide the support services that will enhance and build our community. Individually we don’t have all the answers, but together as a community, we do. HEART is really good at bringing the community together to have one voice.
Community engagement and bringing organisations together is what HEART does really well. There have been many HEART Change Agents over the years, all from different walks of life – and that’s the beauty of it. You don’t need to have a degree/formal qualification to be Change Agent. The HEART Movement connects with everyone, and is open to everyone.
The trainings HEART provides supports and enables whānau to be able to deal with things. The information shared is free for all, and everybody should be able to access that support/service to help build their whānau up.
Fun fact about me is that I find it hard to say “no”. It’s not a fun fact for me, but I think it’s a fun fact for other people, and if I don’t have any answers then I’ll find answers and support. I need to learn how to say “no” often. However, saying “yes” is amazing too. I mean, a salvage yard? Never did I ever think we would be putting on a salvage yard. But it’s for the benefit of the environment. As a believer, as someone who follows God, we are kaitiaki, we are caretakers looking after what God has given us.
Give everything you do 100%, whatever you put your hands to. If you don’t have all the answers right now, if you don’t have the skills – get skilled up. The skills are out there for you to access. Most importantly have faith in yourself, and faith in God that you’re going to move, and will have everything you need.