This morning we talked as a group about having a mission statement for our company. We talked about Muritai School’s mission statement ‘Muritai Students will be the best that they can be’, and we identified and discussed some of the school’s key values, which included values of working well together, respecting and caring for each other, looking after the environment, and respecting things Maori.
We talked about why the school values things Maori and we had a great discussion!
“It is part of our culture”
“It is important in New Zealand”
“The Maori were here first…and we signed a Treaty”
“If we didn’t use the language in New Zealand it might become extinct”
We learnt that in New Zealand many companies value things Maori to help protect the Maori language and culture, and to honour the Treaty of Waitangi.
We brainstormed ideas for a mission statement as a whole group, worked in small groups to try and put our ideas into one sentence, and then had a small working group to pull everyone’s ideas together to come up with our final mission statement. It was a big job to get all the words just right, but we are all really pleased with what we have come up with.
NZ COSSA’S Mission Statement:
‘We explore and investigate so that the sea world around New Zealand can be protected for the future.’
Key Company Values:
• We work hard to be the best scientists we can be
• We research and give people information about the sea around New Zealand so that is can be protected.
• We do our best to look out for endangered species of fish.
• We work as a team and respect each other.
• We respect things Maori because it is part of New Zealand’s culture and the Treaty of Waitangi.
After talking about valuing things Maori in our company we talked about ways a company could reflect this value. We thought we could use the online Maori dictionary to find Maori words to express some of our key company values. We found a number of Maori words to do with protecting, cherishing, and caring for the sea environment.
Georgia suggested we email Mr Chadwick to see if he could put some of the Maori words we chose (‘tai’ meaning sea, ‘taonga’ meaning treasures/things we cherish, and ‘kaitiaki’ meaning caring and protecting for the future) into a sentence to be a part of our mission statement. We are looking forward to hearing back from him!
Some of us are also going to have a go at designing a logo for our company.
“A logo is a picture or a symbol, which represents what company it is.” Tim.
We are looking forward to seeing some designs next week.
