Every Life Fully Lived
One of the country’s most nurturing and happy environments for people with learning disabilities owes its existence to a doting aunt some 80 years ago. Today, Hōhepa Hawke’s Bay, a not-for-profit organisation, continues to support people with intellectual disabilities with opportunities to grow and experience every life fully lived. Words Juliet Harbutt.
In 1958 when Roddy Stronach started school at the newly opened Hōhepa School in Hawke’s Bay, he was 11 years old with a life expectancy, as a Down syndrome child, of only a few more years at best. In those days the needs of intellectually disabled children were barely understood, and many were placed in ‘mental hospitals’.
Roddy Stronach overcame the odds, peacefully passing away in 2023 at the age of 75. With support from his whānau, the Hōhepa community, his friends and time spent enjoying music, participating in Hōhepa festivals, making wooden toys, candles and working in the gardens, he lived a life full of purpose and laughter.
Hōhepa Chief Executive, Santiago De Marco (Santi), says Roddy’s birth inspired a revolution of care and inclusion started by Marjorie Allen, Roddy’s aunt. She was, at the time, head of music at Woodford School for Girls but gave it up to find a way to educate her much-loved nephew. Drawn to the philosophy of Austrian-born Swiss educator Dr Rudolf Steiner, she spent nearly 10 years training and working in Europe and England and experienced first-hand the success the more holistic Steiner method of teaching, speech therapy and farming had on children, particularly those with learning disabilities. She noted the value of relieving stress and anxiety felt by those living with intellectual disabilities and the importance of acknowledging and understanding each individual person, and their innate curiosity and right to develop.
On her return to New Zealand in 1955, Marjorie travelled throughout the country sharing what she’d learnt and seeking support for her vision. In Napier, she met Lewis and Myra Harris, whose daughter Ruby had an intellectual disability. They were inspired by Marjorie’s vision and recognised the need to build a safe and supportive haven for children like their Ruby when parents were no longer able to support her. They donated £10,000 (the average family income was £2,500) and land in the hills behind Napier allowing the establishment of a school and farm.
With their extraordinary ongoing generosity, kindness and support, Marjorie was able to achieve her vision of a school and community for children like her nephew Roddy. Hōhepa School opened on 28 May 1957, with six staff and 15 children.
There is such joy in their task and enormous pride when their finished work is displayed in the shop.
Under Marjorie’s guidance, the team created games, outings and festivals to stimulate curiosity, confidence and social skills, in addition to teaching. Assisting with cooking, cleaning and gardening around their homes generated a sense of worth, of belonging, as well as enhancing self-sufficiency.
Today, everyone in a Hōhepa classroom is supported on their individual learning journey with a focus on learning independent skills and improving quality of life outcomes. Hōhepa Hawke’s Bay School Principal Stephen Evans says, ‘Each child is empowered to find their purpose in life and to develop independence. Success is recognised and celebrated through identifying what is “mana-enhancing” for each individual.’
Children arrive from all over the country and all walks of life, each with their own unique story.
Hōhepa is an inclusive community where people with disabilities, their families and the Hōhepa team all work together to provide the best possible holistic support. One of the students, who arrived with many barriers such as severe anxiety at age 13 is now a happy 18-year-old, studying by distance learning for a Level 3 agricultural paper. He can now look ahead and see his dreams taking shape and could work on any farm, anywhere in the country. Something Hōhepa excels at is breaking each job into parts so that individuals can succeed at whatever task is in front of them.
Across staff, support roles, the people Hōhepa supports, and their families, every day 1,000 people are involved either directly, or indirectly in the Hōhepa Hawke’s Bay community in Clive, Poraiti, Taradale and Napier. The waiting list gets longer as its reputation for success grows. Inspired by Steiner’s principles initially, Hōhepa has adapted and changed over the decades in response to the needs of the people supported and the knowledge and success they have had while retaining ‘purity of purpose’.
What is Hōhepa about?
At the heart of their approach, they focus on ‘granting every person the utmost dignity and respect. This way of life fosters mana-enhancing relationships, partnerships and unity, offering a wide range of transformative initiatives. Also, through meaningful work that nurtures social connections and acknowledges the richness of each individual’s life story.’
The Hōhepa homes are purpose-built, and beautiful, with special design and accessible features. There are many homes available from a tiny house to two-, three- and four-bedroom houses. Everyone has their own bedroom. Nothing like the institutional homes of the past with their dreary dormitories, cold corridors and strict rules. When a place becomes available for a new person, it is a complex process to ensure balance and compatibility for everyone’s benefit.
Many decide to stay in the community where they are empowered with skills and confidence to take the next step towards more independent living. Some require full-time support, others move into self-sufficient flats where, with support nearby, they can live more independently, cook for themselves, get the right bus to the right place and take themselves for coffee or a short walk to the library. Many people want to take active roles in the community like working at the lovely new shop in Taradale, or at Clive selling the things they make and grow, around the farm or dairy, weaving colourful rugs, furniture making or dying the outrageously colourful socks or making firelighters with leftovers from candle making.
Award-winning cheeses
Many Hawke’s Bay locals know Hōhepa just for its cheese, however, the dairy and cheesemaking have been an integral part in the wellbeing of the whole Hōhepa community since the land at Clive was donated by the Harris family in 1959, along with donations from around New Zealand. Farmed using biodynamic practices, the feed produced on the farm must form the basis of livestock nutrition.
Every spring, natural biodynamic preparations are applied to the fields mixed with a cornucopia of 25 or so wildflower and grass seeds, rather than the typical, bland diet of ryegrass and clover fed to New Zealand cows. It is this rich biodiverse diet that makes the Hōhepa cheese so amazing.
Oddly, in the wine world, they recognised that terroir – the environment in which the wine grows – is fundamental to the quality and complexity of a wine, enhanced, or not by the winemaker. Yet most New Zealanders find it, at best, a fanciful tale that what the animal eats significantly influences the taste and even texture of a cheese. Plus, the cows are mostly Ayrshire – a breed long recognised in England (including the King of England who has an organic herd of Ayrshire cows) as ideal for cheesemaking.
It helps that the Farm and Land Enterprises Manager, Carl Storey, started milking cows at 13 and has worked for 30-plus years across the dairy and cheese industry and remains passionate about the farm, artisan cheese, organics and the people who work with him. ‘We love our work. Our farm has the perfect balance. It is big enough to be commercial, yet small enough to be innovative.’ More recently they have introduced the much in demand glass-bottled milk.
Another Hōhepa hero is cheesemaker Inacio, originally from Brazil, who has been at Hōhepa since the nineties. Hōhepa cheese is very much a small-batch, hands-on, artisan process offering numerous opportunities for willing hands to be involved. Inacio and his team are the alchemist who converts the luscious milk into the buxom boulders of sunshine-yellow Danbo, that sit, ripening on shelves for up to 24 months and need frequent turning – a job much loved and coveted. The curd needs cutting, the 61 cows need milking, and occasionally hugging, and the right labels must be put on the right products.
In 1997, returning to Brazil to visit family, Inacio needed a place to stop over in Buenos Aires and stayed with Santi’s parents, already supporters of the Rudolf Steiner methods. This visit inspired Santi and his wife Sandra to volunteer at Hōhepa in 1999 on their way to do a master at a prestigious German University, but Hawke’s Bay and the pull of Hōhepa proved too much. Instead, they decided they could commit to Hōhepa and its people and in turn Hōhepa would give them a purposeful life journey. They came with one child, now they have two more. Santi’s parents and two brothers have also joined them.
Today Santi is the CEO and loves to see the community flourishing as an ecosystem. He knows everyone’s names, shares their joy, listens to their stories and is well respected. His passion is to help those he supports with a transformative rights-based approach. ‘No matter what our abilities or disabilities are, we are all in an ongoing process of transformation, we all contain the seeds of future potential and have a lot of power to make positive impact.’
In the Hōhepa Creative Works studio on Tennyson Street in Napier, you can watch weavers creating their colourful rugs, blankets, scarves and table mats overseen by skilled and dedicated staff. There is such joy in their task and enormous pride when their finished work is displayed in the shop. Next door, there are groups making the most beautiful beeswax candles.
Hōhepa Hawke’s Bay is an extraordinary, happy, successful community and seeing it work first-hand is inspirational. Santi himself sums it up perfectly: ‘We take our work very seriously. We strive to develop an inclusive culture of care, of self-awareness and reflection, of interconnectedness and outreach, of responsibility and accountability, of gratitude and appreciation, and overall, a culture of magnanimity, generosity, and abundance. This aspiration underpins our commitment to the people we support and our vision of “every life fully lived”.’
