Transcript
Pacific people only make up around 5 percent of the Wellington population yet account for 20% of all common assault offenders. According to police statistics, Pasifika people in the capital make up 40 percent of all victims of common assault and Pacific males under 30 years old account for almost 70% of all recorded Pacific crime in the city. The forum's chair Samson Samasoni says the alarming statistics are what led members to focus on family violence.
"There was an understanding that violence is an issue that Pacific communities need to be able to address, but there wasn't a deep understanding of what was behind it, how much of it was going unreported."
Sai Lealea, who is a forum member and chair of the Pacific Advisory group to the Wellington City Council, helped in compiling the statistics and he says are surprising.
"So we used data from New Zealand Police to try to understand the level of offending by Pacific people in our region. We make up about 9,000 of the population in the Wellington Central area. The majority of offending are our youth. That is something we are really targeting as far as working with Police."
Mr Samasoni describes the forum's work as a village approach and although it's only been around 7 months, already other cities are interested in adopting the model. He hopes that working together with police, churches and other government agencies around Wellington will make a difference to improving outcomes for Pacific people in the region.
"What we've found is there's a real willingness to try and colaborate and coordinate and really get a proper understanding of what's going on in the Pacific community, to try and address some of the social issues."
The group has initiated a number of activities already including a Financial Capability Training programme to run in several suburbs across the city. Rob Ngan Woo is a member of the forum and helps facilitate the programmes. He says many Pacific families struggle with prioritising finances between family obligations and other avenues which add to violence issues.
"Often it's drugs, alcohol, gambling, housie. As a local school teacher as well we see the impact of that in terms of the school community in the students' achievement levels. It's huge."
He also says many Pasifika families are limited by a lack of information.
"It is a lack of information and a lack of equipping Pacific families with the right tools and giving them those tools to support them on a more sustainable level in terms of financial capability."
The forum is now initiating a men's health programme to help address alcohol issues as government health statistics show Pacific people feature highly in excessive alcohol related crimes. Mr Samasoni says the forum is happy to help other communities take a similar approach.
"If anyone's interested in the model that we've developed, we'd certainly love to talk to them about it but it's really for the community to be able to address the issues and come together in the way that works for them."
One of the next events for the forum is to help facilitate a gathering of more than 3000 men at the end of this month to discuss what it means to be a Pacific Island male in New Zealand.