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Te Hekenga National Maori Business Networks Conference: Tauranga
18 January 2018
Te Hekenga National Maori Business Networks Conference: Tauranga
Te Hekenga III is the third National Hui for Māori Business Networks and Māori SME’s throughout the country. 
 
The Conference is held every two years and aims to bring together representatives of the Maori Business Networks around Aotearoa to share ideas, issues, successes and “war” stories about the challenges of establishing and growing a Maori business network.
 
But Te Hekenga is much more than that. It is also a forum for budding or new SME (Small to Medium Enterprises) owners and entrepreneurs; like-minded people who want to share or gain knowledge and information about business start-ups or who have taken the first steps on their personal business journey. There will also be people at Te Hekenga who are through those initial growing pains and now looking to grow and expand with an injection of fresh thinking and new ideas. As one speaker put it a few years ago:“I want to take my SME from Struggling Maori Enterprise to Successful Maori Enterprise.”
 
The Conference will also offer participants sessions with solid advice from experienced people involved in various aspects of business. Their journey might be a little different but the goal of successful businesses remains the same.
 
The Conference will invite appropriate Ministers of the Crown to participate (the election in September means that there will be changes to Cabinet portfolios) as well as business leaders, other stakeholders and community groups. We are looking for these attendees to describe for us the current business environment and their views on the future economy and the impact that will have for SMEs. The expected audience is 200+ with a substantial number of those attendees from outside the Bay of Plenty.
 
As a way of “growing” the Maori business sector, particularly in Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty, the Conference will also be offering discounted registrations to tertiary Business and Management Studies students and senior secondary school students interested in commerce and business.
 
For more information and registration go here