With the new Ministry of Education (MoE) contract, HIPPY has expanded its reach to 22 new communities since April 2023 across from the Far North to Timaru. To manage this growth, we have three dedicated HIPPY Regional Managers, each responsible for leading a team of coordinators tasked with establishing HIPPY programmes in their local areas within the North, Central, and South regions of New Zealand.

Angie Moselen is the Regional Manager HIPPY Northern. We asked her to tell us a bit about herself and what she does at Great Potentials.

The Northern Region team, Charlotte Fairhurst, Jo Stockley, Yvette Richardson, Angie Moselen, Maureen Hickey, Kate Atkinson, and Rebekah Taylor (left to right)

 

“I live in Ngunguru, a small seaside community on the Tutukaka coast. I love the outdoors, walking in nature, yoga, and anything to do with the sea. I am passionate about supporting parents to be their child’s first teacher and love the concept of helping them understand the importance of quality interactions in the first five years of their child’s life and the positive impact this has on their child’s lifelong learning and development.

I began my career as a kindergarten teacher in South Auckland 28 years ago, sparking my interest in working with vulnerable children, including children with additional needs. With over 20 years’ experience working in learning support as an early intervention teacher and parenting programme facilitator, I know parents innately usually already have skills to support their child in the home setting but simply need a little help to set them on this path.

My role as the HIPPY Regional Manager- Northern is to support a wonderful team of six HIPPY Coordinators based in Tauranga, Taupō, PioPio, Kaipara, Whangarei and Kaitaia. They come from a range of backgrounds including speech and language therapists, early intervention teachers, family harm advocates, ECE and primary school teachers and adult learning facilitators. Their skills and knowledge add huge richness to the HIPPY programme delivery.

While they are establishing HIPPY in their local areas they are focused on finding and enrolling families. To be eligible under the WIHL HIPPY contract, children need to be aged between two and five and not connected to other forms of early childhood education. Some areas have never heard of HIPPY. They may live in rurally isolated areas, live in emergency transient housing or experience barriers to engaging in early childhood education. So, a lot of work is going into networking and collaborating with local organisations such as Social, Health and Education services, attending community markets and reaching out to local community groups. 

We meet weekly as a group via Teams and this is an opportunity to share what is working well, discuss issues and brainstorm ideas to introduce HIPPY into new communities. I enjoy getting out and supporting my team with networking and connecting with their local community organisations and events.

What is rewarding about this role is building the capability and confidence of HIPPY Coordinators to bring HIPPY to whānau and tamariki who may not have had prior exposure to formal early learning opportunities. I love working with like-minded professionals, who are passionate about making a difference in the lives of parents/whānau, and children in our communities.”