Ezra Hirawani has been named as Young New Zealander of the Year 2022 for his efforts to combat energy hardship for Māori.
Hirawani is the co-founder of Nau Mai Rā, an initiative working to end power poverty in Aotearoa.
The company works by charging people a normal rate for their power and using some of that money to pay power bills for those less fortunate.
He told Breakfast: "We use the portion of your power that generally would make us really rich, like really rich. I don't know if you know how much power companies make but we'll use that for good.
"We'll use that for a solo mother, we'll use that for a solo father."
Hirawani said: "I started the idea off with what if we could build Māori alternative companies had a -- perspective in the way that they would serve products and services."
He added that he soon realised there was a lot of social inequity within the power and energy space.
"Unfortunately a lot of whānau Māori and a lot of Pasifika whānau were the biggest victims of it all," he said.
However, Hirawani said it extended far beyond that national problem to "power poverty knows no race," he said.
"I understand why fuel prices and everything are going up but power is generated here, on Whenua Māori largely and yet many of our whanau are struggling with power poverty."
Hirawani told Breakfast power is not a privilege, it's a right.
"Winter's only what, a couple of months away and there is going to be a large amount of people who will have to make the decision between cooking a meal or heating their family."
Hirawani took home the Kiwi Bank Young New Zealander of the Year awards on Thursday night.
The full video can be found here.
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