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National | Manurewa

Ngā Ringa Raupā - Kahurangi Taylor

Tonight's Matariki star is a New Zealand beauty pageant titleholder who represented New Zealand at Miss World 2008 and now she has taken on a new role as a health professional at Manurewa Marae.

She shares her story with Te Kāea explaining why this job is important to her and her goal to help create more health services for communities in South Auckland.

Introducing herself she says, "My name is Kahurangi Taylor.  I'm from Ngāti Te Ata.

I studied at Massey University and received my health qualifications there.  My job is giving back to the impoverished people in my community."

She works with Taiohi Whai Oranga at Manurewa Marae where her job is to set up health services for youth.

"This is the start of a programme which will teach this generation to promote rheumatic fever awareness.

92% of people who fall ill to rheumatic fever are either Māori or Pacific islanders - that's a lot," she says.

Kahurangi concludes by saying "Most of my mahi is behind the scenes, people don't usually see me in the front.  I'm one of those workers who organise the programmes for our youth.

We know that most of the time young people only listen to their own generation, so that is why we focus on teaching youth."