Late 2023, Geni Ah Tong, Healthy Families Manager and Chris John, Moana Pasifika Systems Innovator were approached by Recreation, Sports and Events Unit at Christchurch City Council to potentially collaborate on a piece of work in the Pasifika space.  

Karla Gunby, Active Communities Manager at Christchurch City Council and her team have a focus on Pasifika communities and enabling them to be more active at council-run facilities. This aligns perfectly with Chris’s role and Healthy Families Ōtautahi’s mahi around the prevention of chronic disease.  

“The Council has resources available, to potentially undertake research as to why Pasifika communities don’t use council facilities as much as other population groups and were looking to collaborate with us to do this piece of work” says Chris.  

“However, we had faciliated a Talanoa with community leaders and identified that there is already significant research out there, so we just need to pull it together”.  

So, to begin this joint initiative, Healthy Families Ōtautahi undertook a desktop research exercise and created a Pasifika Insights Pack. This pack allowed the team to understand what was currently happening at a physical activity level and a broader, socio-economic level, to support them to figure out next steps.  

“From that insight pack, we saw that physical activity in the way the council views it, is not necessarily how our Pasifika communities want to participate.”  

“This left us with more questions, and so we decided to take a broader approach.”  

This led our team to attend the SPACPAC Canterbury Polyfest 2024, the largest Pasifika gathering in Ōtautahi, where we captured insights from attendees. Four key questions were posed; ‘what is the most important thing in your life right now’, ‘what are the things that bring you joy and fulfilment’, ‘what would make your life easier and more enjoyable right now’, and ‘if money wasn’t an issue for the next year what would you do’. 

Overwhelmingly, their responses were “faith, family, culture and education.”  

With these learnings, alongside the insights pack, we reconnected with the Council team to discuss where to next.  

“We discussed how Pasifika have other things that are important to them, and how this needs to be front of mind when considering how-to-involve Pasifika communities more in council facilities.” 

Whilst this mahi is a work in a progress, it provides a basis for continued collaboration on how we can support/leverage off one another to meet the needs of our Pasifika communities. Watch this space!  

Article added: Wednesday 05 June 2024