Pacific youth

Cultural competency, cultural safety

Creating stronger rapport and effective communication with Pasifika youth requires developing cultural competency and adopting a cultural safety mindset. Our aim is to provide Pacific young people with equity, and with the high-quality services they need to thrive. Our mindset, as youth workers, is critical; it is reflected through our approach when working with Pasifika youth. Keep these questions in mind:

• Do I know my purpose in my work with young people?
• Do I understand how I hold power that can make or break a young person’s future?

Those who work with Pasifika peoples have a professional responsibility for cultural safety and competency – to be conscious of their impact and influence: Is it positive? Does it contribute to each young person’s sense of belonging and achievement?

Youth workers have a lot of power. So, we commit to building high quality, inclusive youth work environments and relationships that enable young people from all backgrounds to learn, interact, participate, and contribute with confidence. Research has shown that this makes a real difference for Pacific young people’s learning outcomes.¹

Task: Pacific values

Read this quote about Pacific values from Tapasā. How does it apply to you in your role?

“When you understand the values of Pacific peoples you are in a better position to respond and acknowledge their differences. Your learners bring values that are important and matter to them. This includes cultural behaviour, ideals, standards, and morals. Pacific values are beliefs that Pacific communities regard as desirable, worthy of passing down to generations, and worthy of sharing with others. Your learners will have values that are important to them and their families and they may be the same or different from your personal values. Understanding different Pacific values will help you to communicate with your learners and their families and communities in a culturally responsive way. One of the key things that will enable effective interactions with Pacific learners is to build a genuine personal connection that allows open and trusting communication.”²

Note: While this quote is directed specifically at educators, it applies to all working with Pacific youth.

Refresh your knowledge of Pacific values here with these explanations compiled by Tapasā.²

Commit to cultural safety

Frameworks are available for different sectors and it is important you become familiar with these. Yet, what matters most is your commitment to put in time and effort to really get to know the young people you work with:

• Build knowledge of who the young people are and their backgrounds
• Make connections with them, their families, and communities
• Acknowledge and integrate cultural competency and cultural safety into your approach
• Respect the diversity of Pacific peoples’ communities, cultures, and historical and contemporary contributions, to avoid simplistic assumptions and to better interrogate bias
• Develop and affirm every young person’s potential for success and ability to contribute; replace the deficit narrative of Pasifika youth.

Too many Pacific young people have been victims of tokenistic measures, racial injustice, discrimination, and ongoing disparities in education, health, housing, and socioeconomic measures. Cultural safety and cultural competency are imperative if those with authority are committed to enabling Pacific youth.

Explore further

The Ministry of Education published a literature review in 2008 on the experiences of Pasifika learners in the classroom.³ As discussed near the end of the executive summary on page three, the review includes examples of “teacher behaviour, attitudes, and skills that impact negatively upon Pasifika learners’ social, cultural, and academic achievement outcomes. The review also illustrates the need for educational systems to interrogate the current understandings, practices, and terminology that potentially, or currently, work to inhibit equitable achievement outcomes for Pasifika learners. This remains an ongoing challenge for educators.” The review is available for download at the Education Counts website.

The Ministry for Pacific People’s Pacific Aotearoa Lalanga Fou report (2018)¹ looks to better understand Pacific people’s contribution to Aotearoa’s economy, and how success, prosperity and wellbeing are defined. It provides useful background context to better appreciate Pacific young people in Aotearoa. Ministry for Pacific People’s reports can be accessed here at their website.

Cultural identity and values

Cultural identity is significant in the Pasifika way of life. Pacific parents and families have a responsibility to teach cultural knowledge to their children, especially those raised and/or born in New Zealand. Learning cultural values builds connections with the past and an understanding of belonging to more than just the nuclear family. Pacific people remember that their ancestors designed and engineered voyaging sailboats to navigate the vast Pacific Ocean long before the arrival of European explorers, settlers, and missionaries.

Task: Practices of the navigators

Watch the short video (2:58) and reflect on the statement below.

Think about how this quote from the video might apply in your work context:

“Practices of Pacific People have navigated oceans. These practices have been left behind by the education system. It’s time for the education system to catch up with these innovative practices of our Pacific communities. Now it’s time to make a shift.” (Ministry of Education NZ, 2020)⁴

Task: Language, identity, and culture

Share your story with young people you work with; how you learned about and what it means to know your own gafa/whakapapa and to trace back your family’s journey to Aotearoa. This story gives you a way to connect more deeply with Pacific youth and understand how they learn. Pacific people cherish these conversations and the stories passed down from parents and elders. Your family’s story is a way to engage with Pacific youth through sharing experiences and stories from different cultural backgrounds.

Watch the video (6:15) Language, identity and culture on Te Kete Ipurangi.⁵ Below the video you’ll find a set of reflection questions. While these questions are aimed at teachers, you can easily adapt them to think about your role and the work that you do with young people.

Living in two worlds

As the Pacific population increases in Aotearoa, more Pacific people must navigate living in two worlds with cross-cultural practices – being Pasifika while living a kiwi lifestyle with mainstream cultural practices. It is imperative Pacific youth are encouraged to learn about and strengthen their cultural roots.

The Ola Manuia Pacific Health and Welling Action Plan 2020-2025⁶ puts it like this:

“The Pacific population in New Zealand is youthful. More than one third of all Pacific people are under 15 years of age, and of the nearly 380,000 Pacific people currently living in New Zealand, 60 percent were born in New Zealand. The population is also concentrated in urban areas, with around 66 percent of Pacific people living in the Auckland region. The Pacific population is growing and becoming increasingly diverse. Twenty percent of Pacific people (40 percent of Pacific children aged 0–4 years) identify with more than one ethnic group (compared with 7 percent of non-Pacific people). Many also identify with both ancestral Pacific Island homelands and contemporary New Zealand values and cultural practices.” (p.12, Ministry of Health, Ola Manuia Pacific Health and Welling Action Plan 2020-2025). Available online to download from Ministry of Health website.

It is essential, as a youth worker in Aotearoa, that you continue to learn about cultural safety. This will equip you with the understanding and skill set necessary to form positive leadership relationships with youth, their parents and caregivers, families, and communities.

Professional responsibility

What does professional commitment look like? Fundamentally, you need to:

• know why you are working with Pasifika youth
• understand who you are – your own identity and cultural upbringing
• recognise your own social, economic, or institutional privileges; and
• be aware of how all this may be influencing bias or assumptions you have of Pasifika youth.

It is not enough for non-Pacific youth workers to simply learn about Pacific cultures or youth in the abstract. They have a professional responsibility to interrogate and acknowledge their own biases and assumptions so they can put them aside. Unacknowledged assumptions create harmful blind spots in which a youth worker’s underlying approach it to try to ‘fix’ or make up for the ‘deficits’ of a young person’s cultural background, unaware of what that background contributes, and so not fully appreciating the potential and greatness of the young people they are working with.

Therefore, developing a culturally safe and inclusive practice starts with self-awareness. Many of those working with Pasifika in education, justice, and other youth work organisations are not from a Pacific background, and neither are most of the institutions, systems, or organisations they work for. So, it is imperative to become consciously and intentionally inclusive of Pacific cultures and values.

Self-awareness enables a youth worker to enter a learning partnership. To help the young person develop their potential, while learning alongside the young people, their families, and communities. This shifts the focus from changing or fixing a cultural deficit to supporting the young person to centre their culture as a natural part of their achievement, decision-making and learning. The young person can use their cultural background to enhance and inspire their future dreams rather than as something they must minimise to be successful.

Frameworks for inclusive practice

Here are some inclusive frameworks for different sectors. They are primarily written assist to non-Pacific professionals, organisations, and institutions. It is recommended you become familiar with any that apply to you. However, keep in mind that these frameworks are not a substitute for learning about and getting to know individual young people, their families, and their communities.

• Education framework: Tapasā⁷
• Oranga Tamariki framework: Va'aifetū⁸. Scroll to the page’s end for links on Va'aifetū approaches for these specific cultural groups: Cook Islands Māori, Fijian and Fijian Indian, I-Kiribati, Niuean, Samoan, Tokelauan, Tongan and Tuvaluan.
• Ministry of Health: Pacific cultural competencies: a literature review⁹ and Ola Manuia: Pacific health and wellbeing action plan 2020–2025⁶
• Ministry for Pacific Peoples: Yavu: Foundations for Pacific engagement¹⁰ available at the Ministry for Pacific People’s website resources page.

Go in with the right attitude

Go in knowing you have the power to make or break your youth work relationships. Approach your work with an awareness of Pacific culture and a desire to learn about each young person because you want to provide them with culturally safe spaces and learning experiences.

First impressions matter with young people – your facial expression, tone of voice, and how you carry yourself physically. When you first meet, can the young people immediately feel you are real and will care about them? Or, do they instinctively feel put off? Once young people are put off, they can stay that way, unless you immediately start to build positive rapport.

Put in time and effort

Get to know and understand young people as individuals with an independent plan or approach for each, so you can clearly show them you care about who they are and where they’re from.

While people from the Pacific region often share common values and various aspects of their culture, distinctions still matter. In Aotearoa New Zealand, the Pacific is often talked about as though it represents a single ethnicity, but the Pacific has significant cultural diversity. Young people from the Cook Islands, Tonga, or Samoa have distinct cultures and languages. It is important to stay cognisant of this. For example, imagine a young Samoan joins the group and you greet them with “Mālō e lelei!”. They are likely to feel offended and think to themselves: “this lady thinks I am Tongan”. Imagine how this small exchange impacts your ability to build rapport and establish a good relationship with this person.

Another difficult interaction some Pacific people experience (because they are brown and ‘look Māori’) is being asked to do things that are Māori; putting them into the uncomfortable and annoying position of having to speak up and tell people they are not Māori. This can be especially difficult if English is a third or fourth language, or the person is not fluent in English. Get to know people first, rather than relying on assumptions about who they are.

Talanoa and le Vā

Previous modules introduced the concepts of talanoa and le Vā and how to incorporate them into your practice to establish trust in youth work relationships. It starts from the first interaction.

Young people need time to properly introduce themselves, to collect their thoughts, and to speak. Start immediately building positive rapport; ask the young person their name and where they are from. Learn to pronounce their name correctly. Say something funny – add some humour.

Use talanoa to learn who the young person is, their strengths, how they like to learn, and what they contribute, so you can personalise learning and activities with more certainty. For example, some young people want learning focused on highly practical activities, but others prefer to watch or read something first before they engage with something practical.

The more you incorporate talanoa, le Vā, and how Pacific cultures learn and work together as a collective into activities and learning experiences, the more familiar it will feel for Pasifika young people and the more comfortable they will be to participate.

Language

The Pacific has many languages, each with its own distinct culture and history. Learn the basics of how to pronounce words, especially names! Learn the correct pronunciation for the name of each young person you work with. It may seem like a small thing, but it is crucial for building rapport and trust. How do you elevate a young person’s mana if you cannot even be bothered to say their name correctly?

Also, learn a few common words in a young person’s language for things you say to them regularly like hello, thank you, or well done/good work. Compile a bank of reliable resources to help you learn the basics of the different languages your young people speak. This is something a whole team or organisation can do and does not only apply for Pasifika youth.

Here is an example provided by Jake Scurrah, a tutor in the Waikato:

Replace the deficit narrative

Pasifika people have had enough of constantly being told about what they lack. In Aotearoa New Zealand, there is a negative mainstream narrative of Pasifika youth that focuses on statistics and deficits. This presents a limited and distorted picture of Pasifika youth. Pacific peoples have been in New Zealand for a long time and have contributed significantly, yet this often goes unrecognised in mainstream narratives.

“Pacific peoples have been in New Zealand for more than a century and have contributed significantly to the political, social, and cultural fabric of this society. Pacific peoples influence, and will continue to influence, the demographic pattern, socio-cultural features and overall health and wellbeing of New Zealand in the future as the population increases and ages.” (Finau and Tukuitonga, 2000 in Ministry of Health, 2008, p.6)⁹

We need to shift the narrative focus from deficits to speaking about Pacific people’s strengths, potential, and cultural recovery:

• New Zealand has many successful Pasifika people who want to encourage today’s youth and share with them a positive, success orientated mindset.
• Pacific peoples come from a line of extraordinary educators, scientists and navigators who explored and settled the Pacific for generations.
• Pacific communities are strong centres of collective cultural identity that provide support for young people.
• Every Pacific ethnicity has its own rich history, languages, and traditions.

When we reduce Pasifika youth to statistics and assumptions based on skin colour or cultural caricature, we cause harm and fail to uphold our professional responsibility. Across all institutions in Aotearoa New Zealand there has been a history of injustice that needs to change.

Pacific organisations are working to change the narrative for a more positive impact, to uplift Pasifika youth, and to provide the cultural interconnectedness mainstream institutions currently do not. For example, Tongan schools for Tongan children, and Samoan ones for Samoan youth.

Everyone in Aotearoa New Zealand who works with young people has a role to play in changing the narrative of Pasifika youth:

• Remember our purpose – why we work with Pasifika youth
• Interrogate bias and assumptions
• Help change the narrative to one based on a genuine understanding of who Pasifika youth are, a narrative that enables them to succeed on their own terms.

Task: Reflect on your practice

Think about these questions as they relate to you and your responsibilities:

• How would you define your commitment to cultural safety and inclusion in your work with young people from Pacific backgrounds?
• What are your relationships with Pasifika young people, their families, and communities?
• How well do you understand your own cultural identity and background and its impact on your relationships with Pasifika youth?
• How do you navigate bias, negative narratives and assumptions about Pasifika youth in your day-to-day role working with young people?
• How do talanoa and le Vā inform your youth work relationships, your day-to-day work interactions, and your efforts to help young people learn, grow, and make life choices?

Task: Change the narrative

Take a look at the selection of videos below and choose a few that you’d like to watch. Think about how they help change the narrative of Pasifika in Aotearoa New Zealand. How can you incorporate this into your role?

In the first video, Pacific Business owners in Aotearoa celebrate at the Pacific Business Trust Awards 2020.¹¹ Mike Pero, of Cook Island descent, wins the Prestige Business Award (3:00).

In the next video, meet Chris Te’o, winner of the Ministry for Pacific Peoples Community Leadership award.¹² Te’o is the founder of USO Bike Ride, an organisation that uses cycling to raise awareness of cancer in Māori and Pacific communities and sets up the Bikes in Schools programme for children in Porirua (1:29).

 In the video below from Tagata Pasifika¹³ ‘What makes us Pacific Islanders?’ Alistar Kata and John Pulu discuss Pasifika identity with Fijian influencer Malcolm Andres, Samoan poet Grace Taylor, and Auckland Councillor Fa’anana Efeso Collins. It’s a longer video (23:00) but highly recommended. Together the panelists celebrate being Pasifika in New Zealand and how New Zealand does not realise what great things Pasifika communities have to offer!

For the first time in New Zealand history the New Zealand Law Society has a Pacific leader as the Society's new President. Samoan lawyer Tiana Epati is ready to her mark on the justice system (3:00).¹⁴

Judge Ida Malosi was the first Pasifika woman judge in New Zealand. The video below is part of the series Daughters of the Migration1⁵ which documents the impact Pacific women have had in Aotearoa over the generations. (14:00).

The final video shares the history of the Pacific Media Network¹⁶ tracing its origins back to a community radio station that was launched 1993. The video below celebrates the expansion of the Pacific Media Network and the opening of its new premises in Manukau (2:20).

Foundation for learning

Here are some practical ways to help support Pasifika youth develop life skills through interactions, building relationships, and creating safe learning activities and environments. As mentioned earlier, working with young people starts with getting to know them, and this is ongoing. The learning foundation is a trust relationship in which the young person believes you care about and respect them as a person. To be open to learning (from you) the young person has to trust that your intention is to help them succeed.

Life skills like communication or problem-solving are developed within this positive learning relationship. These transferable skills become the foundation for future learning and achievement. Focus on creating a positive, culturally inclusive learning experience that emphasises strengths and what the young person can accomplish. Start where the young person is at. Focus on what they can already do well. Later, once trust is established, you can move on to more challenging issues or aspects that need strengthening.

Why do I need to know this?

Pasifika youth are often told what to do, but the time is not always taken to establish why. For example, imagine a family where the parents tell their daughter to look after the younger siblings because they are going to work. The daughter resents this. As she sees it, her parents are evading their responsibility to look after the younger children. However, deeper talanoa helps her understand that this is how the mortgage gets paid and how everybody in the family has food to eat. Looking after her siblings is how she shares responsibility with her parents to support the wellbeing of the family.

Transferable life skills such as talanoa and good communication equip young people for resilience and to function well in life and in the workplace. While you still need to clearly communicate your expectations, young people also need to internalise and accept why they are doing something. They need to know: how will learning this improve my life? For example, imagine you are setting up activities to learn communication skills. Before asking the young people to engage with the learning content, establish its relevance:

• Why is it important to communicate well? (the pros)
• What are the consequences of not communicating well? (the cons)

One option is to use scenarios that come from everyday life. For example, a young person gets into an argument (conflict) with their parents. How might communication skills help in this situation? Explore what can happen if the young man communicates well in the situation and what can happen if he does not. Also, explore the situation from the parents’ perspective. For example, the young man has soccer training after school, but the times get changed. What happens when he calls his parent to explain the time change? How does it feel to be the parent in this exchange? What happens if he does not call his parent, who arrives to pick him up at the original time? How does it feel to be the parent now?

Use scenarios to help young people understand the relevance of skills related to organisation and planning. For example, a church event like White Sunday. What happens if everyone turns up on the day but there has been no communication or planning around performances? What are the consequences? Simple, relatable scenarios also draw out from the young people specific skills different people in the community have that lead to a successful event. Use these conversations to explore the value learning these skills.

Leadership and participation

Develop life skills in a safe, controlled learning environment with time to reflect on individual and group strengths; and opportunities to explore further. Engagement is higher when young people make decisions themselves.

Look out for the natural leaders. A leader is not always the most dominant person, rather they are someone others will listen to, who have earned their respect and are good at building rapport. Provide them with an opportunity to take on leadership responsibilities; and provide support and mentoring. Highlight what they do well. Talk one-on-one about issues with group dynamics or conflicts they may struggle to resolve. Pasifika youth often take leadership roles in the family, community, or church with those younger than them. Explore how these skills transfer into other contexts like school, club-groups, or the workplace.

Foster leadership in those who may seem less confident about taking the lead. For example, partner a young person with someone from a different cultural background for a task that puts the Pasifika young person in an expert educator role to complete the task. For example, the pair prepare a presentation or poster on a family heirloom or favourite family meal. This supports the development of communication and leadership skills but without putting the young person in the spotlight before they are ready.

In a learning environment like this you must really get to know the young people. In order to set them up for success, you need to know who can handle greater leadership responsibilities, and who works well together.

Task: Reflect on your practice

Think about these questions:

• How do you build rapport with the young people you work with?
• Who has leadership qualities or potential leadership qualities?
• What are these qualities and how do you identify them?
• How do you encourage and build on these qualities?

Managing conflict

Conflict is inevitable, so the issue is not that conflict arises but how it is managed. Dealing with conflict in productive ways is a crucial life skill for young people to learn. The younger they learn it the better. They learn through activities focused on conflict resolution, mentoring sessions, self-reflection and by observing how you model conflict management.

Even when you put yourself in the background, you are still responsible. Ideally, your aim is set up a learning environment in which young people feel like they did it all themselves. To do this successfully, it is crucial to know the young people – who to put together and who to give responsibility to.

Knowing young people well also guides you in knowing when to step in to alleviate tensions or conflicts, and when it is okay to step back to let the young people sort it out for themselves.

React or respond – what happened here?

Resolving clashes and conflicts means young people learn the difference between reacting and responding. This is something you can also model in your own behaviour.

When a clash occurs, many young people react with yelling, name calling, getting stroppy, or they may retreat and run off. However, they can learn to respond with talanoa. For example, imagine that you’ve see a reaction about to escalate. With a calm approach and tone of voice you can ask, ‘What happened here?’ Then give everyone the opportunity to state what happened and to hear each other’s point of view. Encourage the use of ‘I statements’ rather than accusations, ‘you statements’ or insults.

An example of an ‘I statement’ is: “When I heard you say ________ I felt ________”. Using these statements helps with focusing on your own experiences and feelings rather than solely criticising the other person, which may cause them to become more defensive.

It is important to establish a process for conflict resolution in an early session unrelated to an actual conflict. Set up an activity using funny stories with the young people taking on characters and role playing the scenario to learn the process. If your approach is consistent, young people begin to learn how to do it for themselves without you needing to step in.

Allow time for young people to reflect on what happens when they respond rather than react. What are their feelings? How effectively does it resolve the situation? When we teach young people how to take care of each other and sort out issues together they can be given freedom to manage themselves more. This builds confidence in their own abilities and develops their creativity, problem solving and communication skills.

Prevention is the best contingency

Relationships and group dynamics do not always go smoothly. However, communication skills, conflict resolution, and responding rather than reacting can help change a potential conflict into an opportunity for people to get to know each other, get to know themselves better, and to build stronger connections. All relationships and groups have conflict because we all have different personalities, opinions, and ways of doing things. These differences do not need to be avoided; what is important is how we approach them.

We all need to learn how to connect and appreciate each other through talanoa or kōrero that is honest and open. We can model this for young people in how we interact with others. We can provide a safe space to learn and practice conflict resolution skills through role plays, games, scenarios, or other activities. In this way, young people are better prepared for when real conflict arises.

Young people still need a competent adult who they trust to step in and support them through any conflict they may struggle to resolve themselves. You need to have contingency plans in place for conflict, but the best contingency is prevention.

Acknowledge tangata whenua, get to know each other, make it fun

We strongly recommend you learn to say hello and make introductions in te reo Māori, starting with your very first encounter, to acknowledge the kaitiaki of Aotearoa as Māori. Then, say hello in different Pacific languages and other languages relevant to the group. This is a simple yet effective way to build rapport, especially with Pasifika youth as it feels familiar to the fundamentals of Pacific cultures. Start by acknowledging the relationships and obligations we have to each other. Through talking, get to know each other. Then, do something fun together. Having fun and eating together are two ways to create the conditions for effective learning later on.

Note: Getting to know each other and having fun can of course continue throughout the learning activities and process! Having fun is a great way to engage young people. Look for opportunities to get young people moving around, laughing, and having fun together while still learning. It is difficult to disengage if you are enjoying yourself!

Start out positive using what is familiar

Lead into new concepts with what is familiar and relatable. Try this thought experiment. Imagine you are 15 again and sitting in science class on a typical Wednesday afternoon. Your teacher walks in and writes on the board – thermodynamics and conduction. She tells you this is today’s lesson.

• How do you react? Do you feel a connection to this topic? Do you want to know more?
• Does it feel relevant? Do you care?

Unless you were already a physics nerd, chances are you felt bored, intimidated, or even stupid and as you sat at your desk counting the minutes until the bell rang you disengaged. Even when you had to get up and do an experiment or get out your protractor and start drawing lines and half circles on the page, you had no idea what you were doing. Your mind wandered away, maybe to what you were going to eat after you were finally released from school.

What if instead the teacher had started with a question – Who likes food? Who likes hangi? Who likes umu? What if this started out as a lively conversation about the best hot food and whose family or takeaway shop cooks it best? What if the teacher then asked you to tell her how the food gets hot? What if you had to try and guess how the heat gets from the stones into the food, or why food changes – cooks – when heat is added? By the time the teacher wrote on the board – thermodynamics and conduction – how would you be feeling about that topic? How would you feel about this approach to learning?

When learning something new, how it is introduced is important. Lead into new learning with something from everyday life or that is very familiar and that has positive connotations for the young people. In the example above, the science lesson starts with talking about hot food that everyone likes. A lead in conversation such as this brings people together, draws out good memories, and creates a direct connection to everyday life and the reasons for learning.

Preparation for the project

In preparation for the project later in this module, prepare with activities to learn planning and communication skills starting with what is relatable and familiar. Young Pasifika people are very familiar with community events like White Sunday. They observe and participate in preparation and planning for this event; many different roles and tasks all need to come together for the day to be a success. Here young people have excellent models of leadership skills, goal setting, planning, communication, event management, organisational skills, and creating a road map to achieve goals. And these skills are transferable. However, young people may need guidance around how to identify these skills and then transfer them into a new context.

Skill development activities make learning accessible and create a reference point for later when working on the project. You can remind them of the activity and ask if anything they learned then might apply to the situation now. With Pasifika youth emphasise the collective mindset that is part of their everyday life and how this applies to teamwork or working together with others on a project.

Encourage a think bigger approach

Often, when asked to do something new we go with our first idea, we stick to what is familiar, or we focus on what we assume will be the roadblocks and limitations. Instead of taking this approach, show young people how to brainstorm ideas and think outside the box. Encourage them to stretch their imaginations and be creative in their thinking. Ideas are there to be explored, and you cannot achieve something great if you do not start out at least imagining something great.

As an example, ask young people to solve a problem or come up with an idea without limitation. If they could access all the available tools, materials, people, and resources they wanted, what would they do? Even though the final solution will be limited by real world constraints, it is likely to be more creative because they started out with what was aspirational. They may even find creative ways to preserve aspects of their original vision.

Task: Pacific Skills Summit

Take some time to learn about the Pacific Skills Summit¹⁷ by watching the video below (5:46). The summit offered inspiration and advice on equipping Pasifika youth with life skills within the context of Pacific cultures.

As explained in the description below the video “The Pacific Skills Summit was held on 25–26 June 2019 at The University of the South Pacific Laucala Campus in Suva, Fiji. It was a regional platform that focused on the collaborative efforts and investments needed to secure skills for a sustainable and inclusive future. The Summit was a key deliverable of the Pacific Skills Partnership, launched by His Excellency Baron Divavesi Waqa, President of the Republic of Nauru, at the 49th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders 2018 meeting.

The Pacific Skills Partnership was established in recognition that a sustainable region requires Pacific-led collaboration on skills-based, real-life outcomes for Pacific people and communities. More than 400 representatives from across the Pacific region attended the Summit (students, businesspeople, academics, entrepreneurs, government representatives and development specialists). The program featured more than 30 speakers, including futurists, business leaders, development specialists and entrepreneurs from 12 countries.” (Australia Pacific Training Coalition, 2019)

What are three important examples, anecdotes, or messages that you will take away from this video?

General advice

Along with the life skills already discussed in this and earlier modules, three other key ones are:

• financial literacy
• personal presentation
• coping with failure

Before moving onto more complex projects or activities, spend time developing some of the core skills related to effective communication, strength-based teamwork, planning and organisation. Also, help the young people you’re working with to learn how to identify what they’re good at, and how they can contribute to a group.

Facilitate fair discussions

Treat everyone fairly with the chance to share their ideas, even those who are shy. Identify those who are shy and need more time to think before speaking, or whose confidence needs building – ask them questions you know they can answer. Set the tone in the group so that it is okay to wait for those who need a few extra seconds, and do not allow others to interrupt or be judgemental. Instead be interested in what everyone has to say and show that it is worth waiting to hear from them. This is broader than respecting cultural diversity as we all have different learning mechanisms, but it is especially relevant to young people who need extra time to think because they are communicating and learning new things in English. Many young people need time to think and translate and then express themselves in a language they are not fluent in. It comes back to knowing the young person and their background. A young person who struggles with basic English or written English may be fluent in other languages. They may come across as shy or disengaged in English, but in a different context they are confident and articulate.

A few strategies to help develop confidence and create a fairer group dynamic:

• Wait the extra seconds without interruption and then fully and respectfully engage with what the other person says.
• Pair a shy person with a more confident one and give a task the shy person has expertise in. The more confident person can act as support when they report back to a larger group.
• Give people time to write down and/or think about what they want to say before they have to contribute to a conversation. A common tactic is to spend a few minutes where everyone thinks by themselves and makes notes. They then share their ideas with one or two other people before these small groups share with the wider group.
• Arrange smaller group discussions or activities with different roles for each person in the group.
• Give people time to practise contributions they need to share with a larger group.
• Allow people to present their ideas in different ways not only through discussions.

Financial literacy

Young people will learn over the course of the project to maintain a budget, but it is a good idea to prepare for this by introducing financial literacy early on. How much control you allow the young people to have of the project’s budget depends on their ability.

Start developing financial literacy with small tasks involving decisions about money, numerical knowledge, and researching information like price comparisons or product reviews:

• What is the difference between a need and a want?
• How much will it cost to complete this task / make this recipe / take the bus there and back?
• What do we have right now? Is it sufficient? How do we find out?
• What is the difference between what we have and what we need to complete the task?
• How do we go about getting this money? (Young people are creative with fundraising when given the opportunity!)

Financial literacy is not only about handling money and budgets. Associate it with a broader goal to prepare young people to become the entrepreneurs and business people of tomorrow.

Pasifika young people are not always familiar with financial literacy as they may grow up without having much access or control over money – until they get their first pay. It can be tough to start learning the hard way about the difference between needs and wants and how to budget. You might want to spend your whole paycheck on the latest phone, flash shoes, and brand name clothing, but do you really need these things? Financial literacy is about learning how to make informed choices involving money. This can be taught from a young age.

Learning about financial literacy, managing budgets, and being accountable for money in a safe space with support makes life easier for young people later on. When they live independently as adults, the consequences of not understanding how to manage money or how it works can be a lot more serious. It’s best to prepare them early.

Personal presentation

Young people also need to learn about the importance of personal presentation, hygiene, grooming and on keeping spaces clean, tidy, and organised. As with all life skills, talanoa is an essential learning strategy to help young people become aware that how they present themselves impacts the impressions of others. When they understand these first impressions, they have more control over decisions about how they move through the world.

Young people are often told to clean their room, wash the dishes, or take a shower by annoying, nagging adults. However, attitudes can change with understanding why these things are necessary and that it is part of a wider contribution and responsibility to themselves and their families. These deeper understandings may lead to them taking the initiative to wash the dishes without being told by their parents. This approach also extends into other personal aspects like healthy eating. They may choose to replace buying fried chicken from the takeaway shop with cooking a chicken and making a salad.

It’s okay to drop the ball

We all fail at some point and it is an essential life skill to know how to acknowledge and accept failure and push through it to focus on solutions – to focus on what you can change, and to use failure as a learning opportunity for the next step.

Talanoa helps young people understand and deal with their feelings about failure in positive ways. It helps them develop a mindset of strength, persistence, and resilience. Everyone experiences times when, despite their best efforts, a situation does not meet expectations or turn out the way they wanted.

Many Pasifika young people can find dealing with failure especially tough. They often have pressure to help the family financially and to make their parents proud. The family’s economic situation can also mean the young person feels the consequences of failure harder. The young person may have to take on extra household chores and/or paid work to help maintain the family, while still working to keep up at school possibly in a second or third language (English), and prepare for their future.

This was particularly significant for Pasifika youth in South Auckland during the first lockdown in 2020, when many families lost their primary source of employment and income. Head Girl Aigagalefili Fepulea'i-Tapua'i wrote an Instagram post that went viral highlighting the real-life struggles of her peers during lockdown. She spoke about the inequity many of our Pasifika youth and families face in New Zealand. Watch and listen to her story in the interview below (5:45).¹⁸

For many young people, their parents are their driving force. Doing well is a way to give back to their parents, to help raise the family, and to take responsibility for younger siblings. These added pressures may not be there for peers from other backgrounds who have more time for academic work, hobbies, or recreational activities.

For a variety of reasons, Pasifika youth can take failure especially hard and experience strong feelings of shame. Managing these feelings is an important life skill we can help young people to develop. Sometimes life is unfair – it just does not work out. It may not be about how hard you worked, your efforts, your creativity, not being good enough, or lacking ability; it is just how things are. But this mindset can be hard for many young people to adopt, so they may hide away or experience mental health issues like depression or anxiety because they believe that they’ve failed their parents and family.

Talanoa around failure enables young people to reframe failure’s role in our lives. It is okay to be upset, or to feel shame, anger, or frustration. We should expect failure and the strong feelings that come with it. What makes the difference is what we do with that failure. A young person can feel overwhelmed by the weight of expectations that they are not living up to. But failure is how we learn. It is not the end; it is just the next step towards something not achieved – yet.

Safe spaces to fail

Young people need spaces where it feels safe for them to fail. A space to experiment and try out new ideas without stressing about the consequences of not meeting expectations. A supportive space to speak openly about struggles and freely explore challenges and setbacks. Every young person should have at least one adult they can trust enough to talk with about their failures yet feel supported and not alone. This can be a parent, a sibling, or another person like a teacher or youth worker.

An example of safe spaces to fail are leadership programmes run by Pacific organisations for very young people between 10 – 12 years old. One of the key things they work on is learning how to manage failure. They use the experience to build strength and resilience and to keep pushing forward. This equips Pasifika young people with the emotional tools and mindsets to deal with things not going to plan. The programmes focus on what the young people can do. They replace feeling shame about what they have not achieved with pride in what they did achieve and using this to move on with confidence.

Task: How would you support these young people?

How can we support and prepare young people like those in the scenarios below to develop the resilience to deal with situations like these in life?

• A young person you worked with when they were at school is now struggling at university. It is especially tough because they did well in high school and started university with high expectations. But now they are starting to lose motivation and fall into depression. They feel ashamed and do not want to open up to their parents, who are unaware of how much they are struggling.
• A young woman worked hard for years to achieve a good degree but is now unable to find a job. She feels terrible and ashamed. She hides away so others will not see what she thinks of as her failure. Hiding has led to a cycle of depression, which only makes things worse. She put in so much effort to get the qualification. Her family worked hard to support her. Everyone has such great expectations, but despite all her effort she has been unable to get a job.

Think about these questions:

• How can we prepare young people to cope when situations don’t work out or don’t match their expectations?
• How can we help them learn to deal with emotions of shame and sadness, to not bottle things up and hide?
• How do we make them aware of the impact of bottling things up on their emotional and mental wellbeing?
• What skills and resilience do they need to learn to help them get back up and make decisions about what to do next?

Acknowledgement

We appreciate and thank Landy Nonoa, Director of Talents of the Pacific Academy, for her insights and experiences used in the preparation of this topic.

Think about these questions and make notes to help you continue preparing for Task 3 in Assessment 4.4, 4.5 for this Module.

Think about Pasifika young people you work with:

• Which life skills might they benefit from learning and/or practising before you start on the main project for this Module?
• Select one of these life skills. You are about to design an activity to help develop an aspect of this skill. Which key things do you include in the design to benefit Pasifika young people?
• How do Pasifika young people benefit from your activity design? And why?
• How do you know you are correct about this? To check your assumptions, talk with some of the young people to see if they agree with you.
• How would frame or introduce the activity so it is clear to the young people how participating in this learning experience will benefit them?

You are now ready to complete Task 3 of Assessment 4.4, 4.5.