Five & Dime

Kia ora e hoa,

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Kia pai te rā ☀️

As tauiwi who call Aotearoa New Zealand home, Waitangi Day is a particularly important holiday for us.

It celebrates the document that allows us to legally live here, in Aotearoa.

On February 6th, 1840, Te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed. As the first immigration document of Aotearoa, Te Tiriti represents an aspirational partnership between Māori (Tangata Whenua - people of the land) and non-Māori (Tangata Tiriti - people of the Treaty).

As non-Māori, we have been gifted permission to live in Aotearoa through this document. We are Tangata Tiriti - people of the treaty.

Te Kuru o te Marama Dewes wrote for :
“To be a person of the Treaty is to build a relationship with Māori, to understand the history of how this nation was formed and to commit to the ongoing fight for Māori self-sovereignty.”

This Waitangi Day, we support calls to honour the treaty. Calls to be better Tangata Tiriti.

Build your Te Tiriti o Waitangi knowledge, listen to Māori voices and feel gratitude for the privilege of living in Aotearoa.

Toitū Te Tiriti
Toitū Te Reo Māori
Toitū Te Whenua

📸 .creative 🎨 🏢 .co

“The power of the people is much stronger than the people in power” - Wael Ghonim

🇵🇸

Happy holidays from the five and dime team!

We will be out of the office from tomorrow to enjoy some much needed rest and relaxation after another big year.

Enjoy the sunshine, and we'll look forward to connecting with you in 2024 ☀️

The Wellington City Mission Social Supermarket received a record number of Christmas donations this year!

We were thrilled to join Thankyou Payroll's Big Christmas Mission this year, which collectively donated over $13,000 worth of food and household items to the Wellington City Mission who support families in need. That's over 20 big supermarket trolleys' worth of essentials like food, nappies and hygiene products. 🛒🛒

Here are some snaps from the Thankyou Payroll team, who also spent a day at WCM's Social Supermarket in Newtown to help sort food and other donations for distribution to the community.

Nothing fills our cup like helping to fill someone else's 🥰

If you would like to make a donation, or support the Wellington City Mission in another way, head to their website: wellingtoncitymission.org.nz

In a world of Tik Tok therapy, podcast experts and $500 self-care routines, figuring out how to stay mentally healthy can feel like ✨a lot✨

Luckily, scientists at Otago Uni recently did some research to find out which behaviours were the best predictors of mental heath and wellbeing.

The results: Focus on the basics - Sleep, physical activity, and diet.

The study found that sleep quality is the most significant factor when it comes to your mental health. This supports earlier research that also found sleep to be the biggest indicator of wellbeing. Specifically, this study found depressive symptoms were lowest in people who slept for 8 - 9.7h per night.

The second most significant predictor of mental health is physical activity. The study considered someone to be physically active on any day where they had exercised for 30 mins or more, and found that people who reported higher levels of activity were statistically likely to have fewer depressive symptoms.

The final factor was food. Specifically, the study found that the amount of raw fruit and vegetables a person ate could predict their mental health. People who ate 4.8 servings of raw fruit and veg were the most mentally healthy, and those who ate less than two or more than eight servings per day had the greatest risk of experiencing depressive symptoms.

So there you have it - backed by science. If you're struggling with your mental health try aiming for these three goals each day:
💤 get a good sleep (9hrs if you can)
🏃 move your body (30+ mins ideally)
🥬 eat some greens (raw fruit and veggies especially)



📸 Sarah Booher

Source: Wickham, S et al. The Big Three Health Behaviors and Mental Health and Well-Being Among Young Adults: A Cross-Sectional Investigation of Sleep, Exercise, and Diet. Frontiers in Psychology. 2020 Dec.

Part communications, part creative agency - five and dime's work draws on deep human-centred insights across behavioural drivers such as values, mindsets, belief systems, wider collective narratives and underlying barriers.

Using these insights, we can co-design communications strategies, produce brands, run campaigns and craft stories that unlock better outcomes.



📸: Sarah Booher

"All that separates, whether of race, class, creed, or s*x, is inhuman, and must be overcome." - Kate Sheppard

In a world where uncertainty is certain and challenges seem insurmountable, it's the meeting of hope and action that effectively shapes our individual and collective fate.

Aotearoa – we have an election coming up this week. And for a country that was the first to give women the vote, what's modern democracy if people like you, and people like us, don't show leaders what we want?

If we hope for a society that values the wellbeing of our most vulnerable, access to housing and basics like food and transport, and freedom to live the life we want (including going to the places we want and doing the things we want), and then take deliberate actions to achieve these ideals. That's when we see the promise of democracy flourish.

Voting is a simple action that reminds leadership who is in charge.

In this election, take action for hope. Ask yourself these questions, as you continue engaging with and researching your candidates (and reading the election narrative):

1. What do I want for my life?
2. What do I want for the lives of others?
3. Who do I need to vote for, in order to make that happen?
4. What else do I need to do (other than vote) in order to make that happen?

Hope is the belief in the probability of the possible rather than the necessity of the probable. It's a core ingredient in the fight for progress, the strive for meaning, and the sweet satisfaction of fulfilment.

Translating individual hopes into collective hopes builds common ground. And we want to talk about the importance of building common ground in the context of this week's elections.

Every day we read another story that sparks our anger. A father and store owner in Porirua is in critical condition after he was attacked while confronting a shoplifter. A young mother and primary school teacher who received a shock bowel cancer diagnosis must find $100,000+ for life-extending drugs. National candidate Paulo Garcia narrowly avoids being hit by a car in an alleged attack in New Lynn. Labour candidate Angela Roberts slapped following a political debate in Taranaki.

Negativity can be counterproductive to progress, because it saps motivation and enthusiasm, stifles creativity, impedes problem-solving, distracts from addressing the actual issues at hand, undermines resilience, fosters resistance to change, and erodes trust.

No one benefits when negativity is stoked. It makes us feel angry, or worse, indifferent. Yet these 'nightmares' are shared challenges, that remind us that we've struggled too.

Finding common ground is key – the priorities we all have, the things we all want. These are the things that bring us collective hope. These are the stories that remind us that what we want is possible, as we can usually find more things that unite us than divide us.

We can always rely on Ali, our Storytelling and Communications Specialist, to be wearing a fun, self-made outfit to brighten up any day we spend in the office together.

Ali started sewing when she was six, and quickly moved from making pillowcases and Christmas decorations to entire outfits that expressed her creative vision. These days, her wardrobe is chock-full of garments she made herself, many of which are created entirely from salvaged second-hand or waste materials.

Feeling frustrated with the current state of the fashion industry, Ali has even started her own slow fashion label .nz to provide a local, sustainable clothing option that takes a circular approach to fashion, and considers the long-term impacts of the clothes we wear.

As well as offering clothing rental and repair services, Ali also teaches sewing lessons, giving people the basic skills they need to alter or mend their own clothing, or create something simple from scratch.

When it comes to hard conversations, we believe in connection over correction.

A lot of times, when we talk to people, they don't see things the same way we do. You might relate to this – you're having a conversation with someone, assuming they're on the same page as you, only to find out that their opinion is wildly different and not at all compatible. It can be awkward and uncomfortable.

Often our first instinct is to correct the other person by telling them all the ways they're wrong. But this pretty much never helps. It feels like an attack, making the person you're speaking with defensive and sometimes angry. Things get heated and suddenly no one is listening or understanding anything that's being said.

Instead, aim for connection rather than correction.

Instead of pointing out all of the ways the other person is wrong, try to start by listening. Put yourself in their shoes and see if you can understand why they're rejecting your information or views. Understand their fears and what matters to them. Aim to build mutual understanding. That's the foundation of trust.

By connecting with them first on a human-to-human level, you'll have a much better chance of being able to sway their opinion, because the conversation will feel more like a discussion and less like an attack.



📷 .creative

Saturday was International Youth Day, the perfect time to celebrate Vivita Aotearoa and the wonderful work they're doing with our rangatahi.

Vivita are on a mission to empower the next generation of changemakers. They do this by helping kids aged 9-15 develop the confidence to imagine the future and the skills to create it.

We're lucky enough to have a Vivistop right here in Welly, where kids can freely explore, experiment, and create - everything from building robots, to learning how to forage seaweed, to engineering something that can actually fly!

At the start of this year, we worked with Vivita Aotearoa to come up with a plan for how they talk about their work and reach more people. We helped them figure out what's most important to them and how to share it. The best part? We get to continually collaborate with them, as they bring the work to life, through ongoing mentoring with the wonderfully talented Lainy (their Community Catalyst).

So happy International Youth Day, and thank you Vivita Aotearoa for lifting up and empowering our rangatahi 💗🌱

Matariki marks the start of the Māori New Year, which occurs with the rise of te iwa o Matariki (also known as the Pleiades cluster of stars).

It is a time to reflect on the concept of whakapapa - the interconnectedness of all living things, and the integral roles family and community play in our lives.

We will be taking a moment to reflect on the past year and set intentions for the future, giving extra special attention to how we're showing up and contributing to our collective wellbeing.

Ngā mihi o Matariki, te tau hou Māori 💫

Festival for the Future 2023 just wrapped up in Wellington's brand new Tākina Centre and it was INCREDIBLE.

Over 1,400 future and current leaders and change-makers came together to explore today's big issues, and we were thrilled to get amongst.

We were hyped about attending after spending the last few months in the lead-up helping Inspiring Stories promote the event. We'd crafted social media posts about the long list of A+ speakers, seen the hot-topic discussions that would be happening during the panels and learned about the cool work being done by partners and sponsors. Plus, tickets sold out - that's how you know it's gonna be good!

And gosh did it deliver. 🥹

Some of the highlights for us were:
🌱 Deepening our understanding of indigenous knowledge, and learning how we can work to decolonise our thinking
🌱 Seeing the passion, resilience and power that pours from our young people, and hearing them imagine and forge pathways forward
🌱 Meeting so many like-minded humans who share our values and are also working towards a brighter future where we all can thrive


📸 Inspiring Stories + Create Now

From the ‘Yunus Centre’ at , to the ‘Centre for Impact Innovation’. 🔥🌏🎉

This team is always pushing the boundaries of impact innovation towards better horizons. It was an incredible privilege to journey alongside them (and their communities!) to surface a new name and brand.

Looking forward to sharing as they continue to release more, but want to acknowledge the incredible team who worked for almost a year on this - , Helene and - and the wonderful Athanasia (Strategic Communication Lead at the Centre), and Ingrid and Alex (Co-Directors) for your leadership (and humility) through this project.

🌟Wonderful human appreciation post🌟

Athanasia Price feels like a work bestie to us, even though she's technically a client rather than a colleague. As Strategic Communications Lead for Griffith University's Yunus Centre, we've worked closely with Athanasia on a variety of projects from brand development and strategy to events and programme promotion.

We love Athanasia's straight-up comms style, and they way she weaves her deep and thorough understanding of the impact sector through her work. Saying her values align with ours seems like an understatement - it feels more like we shape our values together, through deep conversations and sharing honestly. And laughing. We do lots of laughing together as well.

How cute is this snap of Athanasia and Helene together (for once!) in Melbourne during the 2022 Social Enterprise World Forum?!

Merry Christmas from the five and dime team! It's been a tough year, but we've made it to summer and the holidays ☀️ We're taking a moment to think about the power of positive language and narrative, and how it can call attention to, and encourage, the types of behaviour we need for a thriving 2023.

Our Christmas cards this year, artwork by the kids of five and dime!

Their brief:
Draw us the front cover of our Christmas cards using three things to tell a story:
🎄 Something Christmassy (maybe Santa, Christmas trees, reindeer, snowmen!)
🎄 Some gingerbread tāne or gingerbread men
🎄 Lots of birds and maybe some forest too, it would be especially great if they were birds from New Zealand

We think they did an excellent job!!

Today is our last office day for 2022, we'll be back on January 11th. Have a wonderful summer break.

We thoroughly enjoyed Wednesday's Challenge-Led Innovation Workshop with The Yunus Centre and Wellington City Council. The energy that emanated from people, the depth of the conversations, and the desire for action were palpable.

Here are some of the key ideas that emerged:

💥 We must be radical pragmatists
This work is hard and emerging – there are more questions than answers. But we are well aware of the risk of doing nothing. Acknowledging that the people, existing conditions and infrastructures around you may not be ready, the best place to start is where you are (and to meet people where they are). How can you reframe the common blockers? How can you attempt to shift traditional risk-averse mindsets to give challenge-led innovation a go?

💥 Enquiry, Experimentation and Learning
The space for enquiry emerges in the growing gap between the exponential pace of crisis and the moderate pace of institutional change. This is fertile ground for innovation and experimentation.

We strive to transform the whole system. This includes rather visible levers - such as structures, capabilities, policies, capital, governance frameworks - alongside the invisible drivers - like culture, values, mindsets, leadership - all of which are interconnected. Such level of complexity requires an iterative approach of enquiry, experimentation and applied learning. For instance, the challenges you identify may be raw initially. More legitimate challenges will emerge as you do the work, convene actors from across the sectors, and seek coherence in approach. How can you start small? What can you prototype before you scale? How can you embed learning at the core of your process and measurement frameworks?

💥 It’s innovation paired with excavation
This work is partly about looking back to go forward. We recognise the role of indigenous knowledge and wisdom in rethinking the ways we connect, the ways we organise, the ways we create value, and at the core of it all: what it is that we truly value. We are facing multi generational challenges that require multi generational responses grounded in principles of inclusivity, equity and reconciliation.

If you attended, thank you for the thoughtful and ambitious energy you brought to the room. If you'd like to stay connected with the people you met, DM us and we'll send you a link to our contacts spreadsheet where you can add your details and find how to contact others.

How does five and dime make sure working from home works for us?

📆 By keeping our calendars up to date. Because they give us a way to cordon off and protect non-work time when we need it.

☕ With a weekly coffee allowance so we can get out of the house and work from a cafe. Because a change of scenery is excellent for getting the creative juices flowing.

👶 By including our babies in meetings when we need mama-time. Because we love our work, but we love our kids more and sometimes they need us at inopportune times.

🥰 With a non-work team check-in twice a week. Because it's nice to chat about personal things as well as work, even if there's no water cooler to stand around.

🐈 By including our pets in team meetings. Because sometimes it's easier to let them sit on our lap than to be constantly fending them off!

Do you do some of these too? What else do you do to make WFH work for you?

Our virtual team check-ins have become much cuter lately, because our General Manager, Kelly has been fostering kittens. Experienced with fostering, and having spent years volunteering at a local cat shelter, Kelly thought this would be a good way to keep her daughter Lucy happy without actually committing to another pet (Kelly’s house is currently home to 1 greyhound, 2 cats, 3 axolotls, and 5 guppy fish with her kids still petitioning/pleading for even more pets!).

Of course, a few months on, Kelly has ended up with a ‘foster fail’ (an animal who ‘fails’ being fostered because it’s adopted by its foster family) who has chosen her as its human.

Kelly has loved animals since she was little (and known how to befriend them with food, as evidenced in these photos!), and grew up rescuing stray cats and injured birds, and taking in the dogs no one wanted. One time she even discovered a cow in the living room that her mum had brought home after finding it injured in a field. 🐄

Our youngest member of the team, Rumi, is celebrating her 1st birthday today. In all her wisdom, here are 3 ways she’s taught me that motherhood and leadership overlap.

1. Leaders (and mothers) stop sweating the small stuff (as much).
The idea of a 40-hour working week was designed to be supported by one adult family member who stays at home and looks after all of the household chores, life admin, cooking, parenting etc. If you're like me and you're in a both parents working household (or both parents working multiple jobs!) you realise quite quickly that there's a lot of stuff that has to give. Being a good leader, also forces you to cut through the complexity and focus on the stuff that truly matters. Oh and create systems, systems help!

2. Leaders (and mothers) understand that changing the context changes the content.
Working from home when there is peace and quiet produces a certain quality of output. Now compare that to working from home when there are loads of distractions (baby, pandemic, too much washing, renovations etc). Good leaders know when it's time to get out of the office, or the environment you're working in, and the impact that this new context has on content, outputs, and outcomes.

3. Leaders (and mothers) know they need a network of support (duh).
This one feels obvious, but I’ll say it again for the people in the back. It’s a strength to ask for support. It’s masterful to build support scaffolding when you’re juggling the heavy responsibilities of a team or little people. The more responsibility, the more levels of scaffolding you need around you.

…and a bonus, but crucial learning from young Rumi this year: perhaps the biggest contributor to your mental health and performance is a good night’s sleep. Which no one can quite prepare you for until it’s gone. 💤🛏😴

Event announcement - Intro to Challenge-Led Innovation

We're co-hosting an event that we believe fills a genuine gap here in Aotearoa. We're talking more and more about tackling the largest and most complex challenges we've ever faced as a species. And yet how will we do it?

Our focus at five and dime is increasingly narrowing towards storytelling that enables systems change. Challenge-Led Innovation provides a really valuable lens for responding to the big system's problems that matter to you and your team. It can also help to build a more inclusive and pragmatic story for others to join in support of your mission.

So come, connect and be inspired by a group of like-minded systems thinkers. Get a taste of what Challenge-Led Innovation is and how it could be applied in your work. 

Sign up to be notified when tickets go live at the beginning of November.

Some people take their clients out for lunch. We make shoes together 💖

Ali has been working with Lou from Shoe School since she started with five and dime back at the start of 2021. Together, they work on Shoe School's digital presence; social media, ads, website and emails. The relationship is fluid, and the work changes based on Lou's needs that month (and whether either Lou or Ali have had any good shower thoughts that need actioning!).

Lou shared some words with us about the partnership recently:
"I feel very lucky to have such a true supporter of my business to help with my digital presence! Ali has lots of love for craft and entrepreneurship, it's a match made in small biz heaven. I'm able to really easily communicate my ideas for Shoe School, which she in turn is able to transform into fab copy and marketing strategies to bring people through the door."

First image taken by Bonny Beattie via Broadsheet New Zealand who recently published an article on Lou and Shoe School.