Platform One’s approach becomes real through practical community projects.
Projects begin with a community need, opportunity or ambition and bring together independent people, organisations, knowledge and resources around a shared purpose.
On Waiheke Island, WE Share Community Power is the first practical expression of this approach — helping connect individual energy and resilience projects to a longer-term community direction while participants remain independent.
The aim is for separate efforts to reinforce one another and create greater value for the people taking part, the community and the wider systems they are part of. In energy, that may include lower energy costs, stronger resilience, local or community ownership where practical, environmental benefit, stronger community capability, and a fairer share of the value the community helps create.
How Projects Take Shape
Projects are developed through Project Circles — focused groups formed around a clear community need, opportunity or priority.
A Project Circle brings together the people and organisations needed to:
- define the outcome they are trying to achieve
- build enough shared purpose to work together
- develop a practical pathway
- bring together the right knowledge, partners and resources
- take responsibility for delivering the work
- keep community benefit at the centre
The Community Facilitation & Coordination layer helps independent projects connect around an identified community outcome, where useful and agreed. Through WE Share Community Power, that means helping energy and resilience projects contribute toward Waiheke’s longer-term community energy direction, while exploring how their combined resources can create greater value for participants, the community and the wider electricity system — with a fairer share retained locally.
Participation remains voluntary, and each person or organisation retains responsibility for its own decisions and commitments.
Aligning Projects to Create Greater Community Value
Waiheke already has many people and organisations leading valuable projects for the community. Platform One is not about claiming those projects, replacing the organisations behind them, or bringing everything under one structure.
The opportunity is to help different projects, organisations and people see where their work overlaps and where greater alignment around shared community priorities could create more value — for the people taking part, the community and the wider systems they are part of. In energy, that includes exploring how combined resources can contribute useful value to the wider electricity system while retaining a fairer share locally.
When independent projects can connect to a wider community direction, separate efforts can reinforce one another, knowledge and resources can be shared more effectively, and opportunities that would be difficult to achieve alone can become possible.
Alignment does not require everyone to agree on everything or work in the same way. It means finding enough common purpose for different projects to contribute, in their own way, toward outcomes that are in the wider and longer-term interests of the community.
The opportunity is not to make every project the same, but to help good work connect and add up to greater community value.
How Projects Are Supported
Projects remain independent and focused on their own practical outcomes, while drawing on the wider Platform One and WE Share structure where that adds value.
The Community Facilitation & Coordination layer helps independent people and organisations work together toward an identified community outcome. Through WE Share Community Power, this means helping energy and resilience projects connect with Waiheke’s longer-term community energy direction, and bringing together partners, knowledge and resources where useful and agreed by those involved.
Platform One Foundation can support Project Circles by helping secure and provide funding, and by providing the legal, financial and stewardship framework needed to protect community purpose and value. Where funding is received through the Foundation, it is held within the Trust’s charitable protections and used for the approved community purpose.
This creates a protected base from which projects can develop without forcing them into a single organisational model. As projects mature, the people involved can determine the ownership or operating arrangements that best fit the project — including community or cooperative ownership where appropriate.
Project Circles and other independent community initiatives remain responsible for developing and delivering their own initiatives.
Different Projects Need Different People
Not every project needs the same mix of people, organisations or expertise.
A Project Circle can grow around the people who are interested in a particular issue or opportunity, with specialist knowledge, smaller working groups or additional partners joining where useful.
Different projects can therefore remain distinct, while still connecting with other work where there is a clear benefit in doing so.
The aim is not to bring everything together. It is to make it easier for the right people to work on the right things, while creating enough visibility and alignment for separate efforts to strengthen the wider community outcome.
Current Projects
Through WE Share Community Power, participating people and organisations are developing and testing practical community energy and resilience projects on Waiheke. The work below is at different stages of development.
Current work includes:
- WE Share Community Power — working toward the 10-year Power-Positive Waiheke plan, bringing practical energy projects together to help create greater value for participating households, the community and the wider electricity system.
- WE Share Mini-Pilots — small practical trials involving smart hot water, household batteries, solar, EV charging and smarter energy use to find out what works and where real value can be created.
- Community Halls & Resilience — helping local community facilities strengthen emergency power and communications capability.
- Waiheke High School Community Resilience Project — developing the school as an important community energy and resilience hub.
- Community Water Heating Project — exploring smarter use of electric water heating as a flexible community energy resource.
- 50 Solar & Battery Systems Pilot — developing a coordinated group of household energy systems to test how they can create value for participating households, the community and the wider electricity system, while retaining a fairer share of that value locally.
- Community Energy Showcase — bringing the community, industry and local organisations together around practical energy opportunities.
These projects are different and involve different people and organisations, but where useful they can align around a shared community direction and help separate efforts add up to greater community value.
Building on What We Learn
Projects do not need to operate in isolation.
Experience, relationships, funding pathways, technical knowledge and practical solutions developed through one project can often be useful to others.
Platform One helps keep that learning, knowledge and continuity available over time, while each Project Circle remains free to decide what is useful for its own work.
Where projects align around shared community priorities, that accumulated learning can make future work easier to start, reduce duplication, strengthen partnerships and help communities build on what has already been learned rather than starting again each time.
Over time, the aim is to turn practical experience into stronger community capability and greater community value — and make what we learn available so other communities can develop their own approaches.
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