Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt.
Co-working spaces can be great little communities. There’s something exciting and energising about being around people making interesting things happen, always new people with exciting news, connections you can make and a lot of people working on a global level. They are also little bubbles, and can help you forget that life isn’t like that everywhere. In fact, even having co-working spaces available isn’t all that common. Even within your own city. One person who saw the power of community, and worked to make a space happen for South Auckland, is Manawa Udy. Last year she spearheaded the crowdfunding and then establishment of Ngahere Communities that runs Te Haa o Manukau - a co-working space, and intentional community for the creative, innovative, entrepreneurial people of South Auckland to help tap their vast potential.
Te Haa o Manukau is a project from the Southern Initiative, supported by ATEED through GridAKL, and is built to be a thriving heart and link to the wider innovative business space. Manawa has a background of pioneering community entrepreneurship projects such as a buy one give one model driving school and forming the PETER collective, a community of community providers to better serve the people around Mt Roskill. And as a creative director at Bob and Bob, Manawa tells these stories and others.
To chat entrepreneurship and community, Manawa joins us now.