The city’s first tertiary course for Pacific Island elders (Matua Pasefika) living in Christchurch has compiled a booklet and DVD of their stories and songs – the first record of its kind in New Zealand. It will be launched next month at CPIT’s end-of-year ceremonies. The booklet and DVD are among a range of Pasefika learning resources funded by a grant from CPIT Foundation.
“If you educate the elders, you educate the whole family. The children and grandchildren will see the benefits and want to be involved in further education too,” said Sam Uta’i, of CPIT Pasefika Development, who will receive the CPIT Foundation Award at an awards ceremony on Friday night.
“Many of the stories tell of their arrival and experiences here and have been recorded in their own language – Cook Island, Maori, Samoan, Niuean and Tokelauan,” Uta’i said. “This is a really valuable resource and can help promote the languages, especially those languages that are dying, like Niuean and Tokelauan.”
Keeping Pasefika languages alive is also the focus for a new adult Samoan language course, which will start next week at CPIT’s Te Puna Wanaka Pasefika Room. CPIT Foundation is funding the language resources for the course and assisting with “clothing” the room to provide a compatible Pasefika setting for adult learning.
The pilot Samoan language course begins on Wednesday November 26 at 5pm and will run over five weeks. If it is successful, further courses will be run over the summer and then back-to-back next year. There will also be Pasefika Performing Arts courses offered next year, all as a result of feedback from the local community.
The Foundation is also funding the Pasefika Youth Leadership programme beginning next year with the goal of encouraging increased Pasefika student recruitment, retention and success. The programme includes a week-long residential course for secondary and tertiary students. Secondary Pasefika students will also be catered for with a CPIT Foundation funded emerging leaders breakfast and workshop. It will provide leadership mentoring for young people seen as potential leaders in the fields of academia, sport, culture, business and science.
The 2006 Census showed around 12,500 Pacific people living in Christchurch, a 26% increase on the previous Census. Most of them were aged under 30 and 30% had no secondary or tertiary qualifications.
The Foundation’s grant to CPIT Pasefika Development is one of eight with a total value of $57,000 being awarded at a special awards dinner in Christchurch this evening. Others include funding Te Puna Wanaka Awards for Excellence for both Maori and Pasefika students, a collaborative arts project with Canterbury Museum featuring artefacts from its unseen collection, a research project to find out if native edible plants have any nutritional value, , the production of a book “Piwakakaka and the Forest” promoting environmental values and distributed to primary schools, the attendance by a tutor at a Worldskills competition for trades people held in Sydney, the attendance of a tutor at the Pilchuck Glass Summer School in the USA and the development of web-based animations to make science courses more engaging and innovative for students.