About HESSA
Our story
HESSA was established in 2023 and is an incorporated society with charitable status. Our purpose is to support home educated children across the country to participate and compete in student sport in New Zealand.
HESSA is the national body representing the right of almost 11,000 home educated domestic students to compete in student sport in New Zealand. Home educated students are domestic students regulated by section 38 of the Education and Training Act 2020 and overseen by the Ministry of Education.
As at 1 July 2024, Education Counts statistics show there were 10,757 home educated domestic students registered in Aotearoa New Zealand. Of these, 3,956 are secondary-aged students, and they face significant barriers accessing student sport — including exclusion from competing in secondary-age student sport with their peers because of their educational background.
HESSA believes every Kiwi student has the right to compete in student sports. We want to see system change in secondary-age student sport that enables all domestic students to compete. We are actively raising awareness of the barriers that exist for home educated domestic students with regional and national sporting organisations, to ensure our mutual goals of inclusive student sport in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Our vision
Equitable student sporting opportunities and competitions for home educated domestic students between the ages of 5 and 19.
Our values
Fair play, inclusivity, honesty, integrity, respect, and kindness.
Our people
Mel Ewart — Chair
Mel Ewart has been homeschooling her two children since 2015 and recently moved from Marlborough to the Wairarapa. Mel is originally from North Wales and came to Aotearoa with her (now) husband Ian in 2001.
Mel has many years of governance and administration experience in the not for profit sector, in organisations such as Plunket, Playcentre, Queen Charlotte Yacht Club, Marlborough Colleges Sailing Club, NZIODA and the Wairarapa Youth Orchestra amongst others. She works part time as administrator to the Council of Medical Colleges in New Zealand. Through her teenage children’s experiences, Mel has seen how limited secondary-age student sporting opportunities are for home educated rangatahi and is proud to support HESSA to address this inequity.
Peter Gore — Secretary & Advocacy
Located on a lifestyle block on the outskirts of Hamilton, Peter and his wife have been homeschooling their three kids for 11 years. They are also guardians to their (now) 18 year old foster child who was educated via the public school system to Year 13.
They are an active family that enjoys a wide range of outdoor pursuits and sports. Peter’s wife coaches homeschool hockey and is fully engaged within the greater homeschool community. Their kids are also enrolled in Kumon Maths, extracurricular Physics workshops hosted at Waikato University, music, speech and drama, and other academic workshops that are offered within the homeschool community throughout the year. Their family places a big emphasis on academic learning.
Peter is a LINZ accredited Property Consultant, as well as the founder of a tech startup company, and he has been a director on two company boards. He has extensive experience in corporate governance and sports administration at a volunteer level. Peter has been a committee member of several clubs including Waikato Gun Dog Club and the Waikato Offroad Racing Club where he has held secretary and treasurer roles. Peter has also front footed the homeschool discussion with NZSSSC over the last 4.5 years advocating for the inclusion of the homeschool community in student sports.
Andy Mannering — Inclusion Officer and Interim Treasurer
Andy and his wife have two teenage boys, Lachie (15) and Jackson (14), and have been homeschooling since 2015.
Over the last 25 years Andy has held a variety of leadership roles within for-purpose organisations, local government and now central government. He is currently employed by Kāinga Ora as the Waikato Kaiwhakahaere Hononga Hapori where he has the privilege of leading the Partnerships and Engagement Team for the Waikato. Prior to this he was employed by Hamilton City Council for 14 years, responsible for the relationship management of the community sector with the Council. He also managed the policy and allocation of the contestable funding environment of Council ($2.5 million per annum).
For the last 8 years Andy has led the Flyers Junior Basketball Club in Hamilton city, managing every aspect of the club growth from administration and communications to coaching. The club has grown exponentially over this time and now sees 200 young people playing with 22 teams each term registered in Waikato Basketball led competitions.
Rico Van Niekerk — Health & Safety Officer and Interim Digital Officer
Rico van Niekerk and his wife Chantelle emigrated to New Zealand in 2008 and were based mainly in Christchurch before moving to Oamaru at the end of 2023.
An Engineer with a second degree in IT, it was his time at Meridian Energy as a Wind Reliability Engineer for the wind turbines that cemented his passion for health and safety and the importance of both within an organisation. His family’s homeschooling journey started when his oldest asked to be homeschooled after COVID-19 school closures because he felt he learnt so much more at home. He joined the HESSA team because of his passion and belief in sport and the wellbeing that it offers, and consequently creating an environment where all students have equal opportunity to fully engage in all aspects of student sport.
Krystal Ward — Founding Member, Co-chair
Krystal stepped back from HESSA at the 2024 AGM to concentrate on her studies but maintains an advisory role with HESSA. The HESSA team is indebted to Krystal for her passion and dedication to getting HESSA up and running and wish her every success with her studies.
Fran Cowie — Founding Member, Co-Chair & Digital Officer
Fran stepped down from HESSA in January 2025 as she was elected Tāngata Tiriti Manutaki Maurua | Co-President of Playcentre Aotearoa. We wish Fran every success in her work for Playcentre Aotearoa and thank her for sharing her governance and systems experience with HESSA and for taking the committee’s ideas and producing our beautiful HESSA logo in 2024.
How we work
As a committee we:
- Honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi
- Work to make decisions by consensus
- Act in good faith by dealing respectfully with each other, respecting our diversity and celebrating our differences
- Aim to achieve balanced representation in appointments and elected roles
- Ensure that our members understand Te Tiriti o Waitangi and its importance to our kaupapa
- Uphold international human rights instruments, especially but not limited to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)