Simon Draper's end of year wrap up


2019 marked our 25th Anniversary, and one of the early highlights of the year was the gifting of our Māori name, Te Whītau Tūhono, by Hokimoana Te Rika-Hekerangi, of Ruatāhana within Ngāi Tūhoe.

We recently produced a new Foundation video to give people a quick overview of the areas we cover and the work we do

Te Whītau Tūhono describes an unbreakable connection, and we’ve been working hard to continue the focus on unity and connection implicit in that name.

We were grateful for the support of our Leadership Network’s Te Kahui Māori and our Māori adviser Tania Te Whenua on our journey, and for the ongoing tautoko in our other work, including the release of our report Perceptions of Asia from a Te Ao Māori Perspective.

We ran a range of 25th Anniversary events across the year to highlight how New Zealand’s relationship with Asia had changed since 1994 – and to look ahead to what it might look like in the years to come. The highlight was our “25 to Watch” event at Parliament but we have also published “25 moments” in the Foundation’s history and profiled 25 people who have experienced Asia through our work.

Another big focus area has been Japan.

Against its hosting of the Rugby World Cup, we made the most of the opportunity to grow knowledge of the country and highlight the strength of New Zealand’s relationship with Japan. For instance, we took PE teachers to Tokyo to learn more about traditional sporting culture; supported more than 150 sportspeople and students to have cultural experiences in Japan; provided New Zealand journalists with funding for Japan reporting projects; produced education resources for schools; provided grants for students to study in Japan and published a report on the New Zealand-Japan relationship.

Teachers watching boys playing baseball

A group of New Zealand teachers visited Japan earlier this year to learn about the country and its relationship to sports

The focus on Japan is set to continue next year as we look ahead to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the Paralympics. We’re proud to have partnerships with both the New Zealand Olympic Committee and Paralympics New Zealand to help grow New Zealanders’ understanding of Japan through those events.

Alongside these special activities, we have continued with programmes that collectively give hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders the chance to grow their knowledge and understanding of Asia ­– through everything from “Experience Asia” grants for schools to Track II diplomacy dialogues. You can read more about this work in our annual report.

We have committed to running our Asia Media Centre on a permanent basis after a successful two-year trial – the centre published more than 170 articles this year and we look forward to it growing in 2020. 

We were delighted by the results of our stakeholder survey, which found that 94 percent of respondents would recommend the Asia New Zealand Foundation to others. And 83 percent of people agreed that the Foundation had helped them engage with Asia in a tangible way.

I’m grateful for the support of our stakeholders – without their help, we wouldn’t be able to do all the things we do.

Looking ahead to 2020, we have some new developments to look forward to. As just one example, we are beginning our South Island presence with a new staff member joining us in Christchurch. I look forward to telling you more in the new year.

He konā mai i roto i ngā mihi

Simon Draper