(Picture caption: Inspirational young people have been involved with Tangata Atumotu Trust's Youth Voice Project.)
The pandemic has presented many challenges for the Pacific community in Christchurch, but the area’s oldest Pacific provider is doing all it can to help people survive and thrive.
Tangata Atumotu Trust General Manager Carmen Collie says the Christchurch Pacific community have faced a range of challenges and hardships over the past two years.
“Our community has suffered job losses and associated hardships, requiring support with food and essential items, our young people suffered with a lack of devices to enable satisfactory home-schooling and our matua suffered social isolation with the postponement of their social outings and activities,” Carmen explains.
“As fundamentally collective communities, strain will now be placed on people required to isolate in their own homes, away from loved ones.
“But we are also resourceful and COVID-19 has provided an opportunity for services and personal connections to go online.”
Tangata Atumotu Trust has contracts ranging from mobile nursing, green prescription, navigation support, smoking cessation, financial support services and family violence prevention.
“We have also had a large role to play in vaccinating our Pasifika community and providing welfare support over the last two years,” Carmen adds.
Seeing the community it serves in need of assistance, Tangata Atumotu developed initiatives to ease some of the hardships presented by the pandemic.
With funding imperative to getting the programmes off the ground, the Trust applied successfully to the Ministry for Pacific Peoples (MPP) COVID-19 Fund last year and sprang into action.
Many in the community lacked devices for online learning, so the Trust set about connecting approximately 250 people with digital devices and education sessions to enable their participation in online learning and connectivity to broader online services.
Meanwhile, its two English-language Pasifika radio programmes provided a platform to share key government messaging, discuss topical concerns, and deliver health education sessions.
The Trust also developed a new website with the ability to host our online platform, TAT TV, Carmen says.
“This platform hosts a range of channels including physical activity, financial capability building and youth voices, and it enables our community to stay connected, to learn, to exercise and to share in the joy of our diverse cultures, online.”
With the future of young people always front of mind for the Trust, Carmen says it worked alongside youth to enable their voices to be heard in relation to COVID-19 and a range of topics.
“Our young people made a short film which we then premiered at a local cinema, inviting our Pasifika families along.
“Themes explored included mental health and wellbeing, and racism and we aim to continue this dialogue with young people.”
While the effects of the pandemic continue to linger and affect the Pacific community, the Trust has been able to alleviate some of the issues and concerns through the delivery of its programmes and dedicated funding.
Visit the MPP website for our current funding initiatives.