The Matata Initiative, set up through the generosity of Dick Earle and his late wife Mary, aspires to support more Māori and Pasifika young people into professional careers in engineering and technology. Through the generosity of the Earles, the Foundation anticipates it will be able to offer funding for the Initiative of least $250,000 annually for a 20-year period from 2024.
Background to the Matata Initiative
While teaching at the Native School in Matata in the Bay of Plenty in the early 1900s, Dick’s mother, Eileen Ramsay, was dismayed at the differences between the quality of education delivered by the grammar schools that served non-Māori communities and the native schools that served the Māori population at that time. At a later time, she discussed her concerns with her own children, emphasising the importance of equitable education opportunities and that not all children had access to the same learning in Aotearoa New Zealand.
That seed, sown over a century ago, grew into the aspirations of Dick and his wife Mary. Professor Dick Earle DistFEngNZ – a former president of Engineering New Zealand – remembers discussing with his mother the limited professional opportunities for rangatahi. Throughout their academic careers in engineering and technology, which spanned four decades from the 1960s, Dick and his late wife Professor Mary Earle HonFEngNZ continued to be concerned that few Māori and Pasifika young people studied engineering or technology to a professional level.
In 2023, the Engineering New Zealand Foundation is pleased to launch the Matata Initiative, funded by the Professors Earle. The express purpose of the initiative is to lift the numbers of Māori and Pasifika young people who undertake four-year degrees in engineering or technology and go on to launch professional careers in those industries.
Read the full story behind the Initiative and how it will work
If you need more information to help you prepare an expression of interest or programme proposal, please contact foundation@engineeringnz.org
