ReoAko wins gold at the DINZ Best Awards

Kia māhorahora te reo

What started as a natural way to promote te reo Māori on interactive screens at Te Papa became a way to concretely enact The Crown's Māori Language Strategy "Kia māhorahora te reo" (Every day, everyone, every way, everywhere.)

The idea is simple - if all Kiwis encounter an ever-widening set of [@kupu] kupu [@kupu] Māori woven seamlessly into the web [@kaupapa] kaupapa [@kaupapa] we read every day, we can slowly but surely increase our collective vocabulary. As one of the designers of the ReoAko plugin, Mike Higham, puts it, “We won't become fluent speakers overnight, but we will grow and honour the mana and beauty of te reo while we grow.”

What the judges said

“Beautifully simple and hugely impactful. The judges were so happy to award gold to a tool like this. It’s very rare to see a third-party plugin so well-considered and authentic. It’s exciting to see that it isn’t a fixed mahi but built to grow and improve over time."

How it's been growing 

We've been building and refining our library of kupu, translations, and audio over the last year or so, working closely with our partners Te Māngai Pāho and organisations like BCITO, the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, and the Medical Assurance Society.

The response continues to be overwhelmingly positive, with the plugin now being used by Taumata Arowai, ACC, NZ on Air, and Herenga ā Nuku. 

The ReoAko experience will now be part of your daily news, thanks to a new partnership with The Spinoff. Read the article about the award-winning tool that includes an interview with Octave's managing director, Mike Brough, over on their site.

Kudos to the team here at Octave for taking an idea running with it. And for the expertise and support of all our partners. It takes much more than an idea and some sketches to make a successful product. 

Kia ora!

Join the club

If you're an organisation that wants to weave te reo Māori into your website, check out ReoAko.nz.