Falling pregnant at 14 was a major interruption to Louise Manaena’s education. After giving birth to number three, she wanted more from life.
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do – I just needed some direction,” she said. “I needed to do something for myself.”
In this Local Focus video, Louise talks about how she escaped her predicament. After seeing a Facebook post she enrolled in a programme at The Development Hub in Hastings.
“The Development Hub supports people, business and communities and we provide work-ready training programmes to support wahine here in Hawke’s Bay,” founder Sarah-Jo Barley said.
“It started off seeing a big need for women to be able to become competitive in the job market and be able to work through both personal challenges and get some professional confidence in order to be able to move into employment, education or training opportunities.”
Sarah-Jo admits that inter-generational benefit dependencies and inter-generational cycles of abuse are real, and some women are significantly challenged by it.
First published by Hawke’s Bay today. Read the full article here.