Talking Matters’ mission is to improve quality of life outcomes through rich early language. To achieve this, we partner with early childhood education providers, organisations supporting communities and whānau, iwi and government. We see whānau and educators as active agents of change. Therefore, our strategy is to upskill and empower these adults in children’s lives with knowledge, tools, data and strategies to build and sustain language rich environments in the first 1000 days.

A language-rich environment is vibrant and contains all the languages of a family, community or setting.  It is the space where children in their first thousand days of life can develop the communication skills they need to thrive as confident, competent and creative communicators.