Embracing Pacific Heritage In Early Childhood Development

Apia, Samoa, 13 May 2025 – Two years after the 2023 Pacific Early Childhood Development (ECD) Forum that took place in Fiji, 15 Pacific Island countries have gathered this week in Apia, Samoa to evaluate the progress on ECD in the past two years, highlight challenges, and share experiences.
'There is no greater calling than to shape the world through the heart of a child. And there is no deeper honour than to do so together — grounded in culture, lifted by purpose, and united by faith,' said the Chief Executive Officer at Samoa's Ministry of Women, Community and Social Development, Ms. Loau Donina Va'a. 'Samoa is proud to champion early childhood development across our region, ensuring every child is seen, heard, and nurtured from the very beginning.'
For children to achieve their full potential, they need quality healthcare and nutrition, protection from abuse and violence, early learning opportunities as well as responsive caregiving.
Unfortunately, many disadvantaged children in the region, including those living in poverty, affected by emergencies, on the move, facing discrimination, or with disabilities, miss this window of opportunity for a strong start in life.
"As Minister for Children, I am committed to raising the visibility of children's needs and ensuring they have the opportunity to thrive. We must be persistent in our efforts to ensure that every child is safe, supported, and empowered to reach their full potential," said Fiji's Minister for Women, Children and Social Protection, Hon. Sashi Kiran.
Under the 2025 theme 'Our Children, Our Heritage: Blue Pacific Resilience through ECD Leadership', government ministers and representatives from several sectors, including education, finance, health and social welfare, will participate in cross-country and multi-sectoral dialogue during the three-day forum held from 13 to 15 May. This network is essential for fostering collaboration and to share learning.
"We have come a long way in progressing ECD in the region, and I am excited to see everything that has been achieved by the countries since we last met in 2023," said Jonathan Veitch, UNICEF Pacific Representative. "Embracing a whole of region approach is not only about protecting our young children, but it also means shared support to stop cycles of poverty and under-development undermining the strength and stability of our societies.'
The region will discuss the need for more investment in the culture and traditions that are so rich in the Pacific to drive change and address gaps in ECD. For example, massaging babies is a common tradition of love and connection, but this also comes with health benefits. This includes improving digestion, boosting the immune system, enhancing sleep patterns, and strengthening bonds between parents and young children.
By strengthening these values, young children will be able to get more opportunities for positive physical growth and brain development.
The Forum, hosted by the Government of Samoa, is organized by the Pacific Regional Council for ECD (PRC4ECD) and UNICEF, with the financial support of the Governments of New Zealand and Australia as well as technical support from the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat.
About the PRC4ECD:
At the 49th Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru in 2018, Pacific Forum Leaders committed to 'leading a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach at the national level to address NCDs, childhood obesity and early childhood development (ECD)'. In line with this mandate, Pacific countries established the Pacific Regional Council for Early Childhood Development (PRC4ECD) to guide and strengthen a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to ECD. The Council, comprised of Ministries of Finance, Education, Health and Social Welfare (or its equivalent), is a unique and high-level multi-sectoral body that fosters a collaborative and coordinated approach across governments, civil society, private sector, and other relevant stakeholders: Home New - Pacific Regional Council for Early Childhood Development

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

The Spinoff

5 days ago

• The Spinoff

Can a new suicide prevention plan save more NZ lives?

The mental health minister says clear milestones and better accountability are among the reasons he's hopeful the plan will work, writes Catherine McGregor in today's extract from The Bulletin. A new strategy with sharper teeth Mental health minister Matt Doocey has unveiled the government's latest Suicide Prevention Action Plan, a five-year strategy aimed at reducing New Zealand's persistently high suicide rate. Doocey said the plan would be markedly different from its predecessor, with a focus on accountability, clear milestones and agency responsibilities, RNZ reports. Among the plan's key actions are opening six regional 'crisis cafes' – 'safe space[s] for someone in distress that [are] staffed by people with lived experience', according to Doocey – improving access to suicide prevention supports, and growing a skilled workforce trained in suicide prevention. The plan also includes new regional services and funding initiatives targeting high-risk communities, including rural areas, mothers and youth. Doocey emphasised that those with experience of suicide played a key role in shaping the plan, which received input from more than 400 individuals and organisations. A high toll of lives lost The plan is aimed at addressing New Zealand's concerningly high suicide rate. In the year to June 2024, 617 people died by suspected suicide in New Zealand, up from 566 the previous year. It should be mentioned here that the chief coroner last year noted that the overall statistical rate of suicide was not considered to have changed since 'fluctuations in rates from year to year are common in suicide data'. Be that as it may, the 2024 figure was almost twice the road toll in the same period, report Kim Griggs and Brittany Keogh in The Post (paywalled). The national rate is now at 11.2 per 100,000 people, with male rates (15.9) far outpacing female rates (6.4). Young people continue to be at greatest risk, with the 20–24 age group recording the highest rate at 19.9. Māori remain disproportionately affected, with a suspected suicide rate of 16.4 – twice that of Pasifika, and more than three times the rate for those of Asian ethnicity. The figures also show regional disparities, with the former Lakes DHB area reporting the highest rate (26.8). Debating the data Last month, a Unicef report made national headlines after it placed New Zealand last among 36 high-income countries for youth mental wellbeing, citing a youth suicide rate more than triple the international average. It also found that New Zealand's children experienced the second highest rate of bullying out of the countries included. However, experts including University of Auckland academics Sarah Hetrick and Sarah Fortune have cast doubt on the report's conclusions. The Unicef analysis was based on confirmed suicide data from 2018–2020, ignoring more recent downward trends in suspected suicides among 15 to 19-year-olds, they said. Unicef Aotearoa's Tania Sawicki Mead explained that 'the report uses like-for-like data' in order to ensure consistency when comparing countries. The role of financial hardship While many factors contribute to suicide rates, they cannot be separated from the broader socio-economic climate. Last year an international academic review of global suicide research, published in the Lancet, found a consistent link between economic downturns – especially rising unemployment – and higher suicide rates. Feelings such as 'defeat and humiliation, entrapment, lack of belongingness, and perceived burdensomeness' can be key precursors to suicidal thinking, the authors wrote. 'Some or all of these psychological processes might be at play for those who are economically disadvantaged.' In the post-Covid era New Zealand has faced a dramatic economic slowdown, with mounting living costs and rising job insecurity. These pressures disproportionately affect those already vulnerable – especially young people, Māori, and rural communities. As Georgie Craw wrote recently in The Spinoff, policies that focus solely on GDP growth miss the point: 'GDP doesn't tell us if children are fed, if they feel safe, if they can access mental health support when they're struggling.' Any serious suicide prevention strategy, experts like the Mental Health Foundation's Shaun Robinson argue, must look beyond clinical services to address the deeper social conditions that foster despair.

Newsroom

10-06-2025

• Newsroom

Māmā Kells raises the bar for women in weightlifting

Sport has been a constant in Kelly Ihaka-Pitama's life. As a teenager, she was a talented shot put and discus thrower, competing against world champion Beatrice Faumuina. She rose to Commonwealth Games level, but never got the chance to compete at a Games. Instead, Ihaka-Pitama studied sports science and worked in the sporting industry until she was 22, when she met her future husband. They bought a home and travelled, then Ihaka-Pitama began a successful career in freight forwarding and logistics. But sport was never far from her mind, and she started coaching athletics and netball. At 40, Ihaka-Pitama fell ill with a tumour in her thyroid. After surgery, she joined a gym, started doing CrossFit and was soon hooked on weightlifting. 'I love the sport. It's been a whirlwind relationship that's gone from zero to 100,' she says. 'I wish I'd found weightlifting at 16.' She still competes in lifting and is the current New Zealand champion in her 45-49 age group, holding national masters records in two weight divisions, competing out of the Papatoetoe Weightlifting Club. 'I'm the oldest lifter at the club, and I get called 'Māmā Kells',' says the 50-year-old, of Te Aupōuri descent. 'That's the kind of aura I bring to any space I work in. And it's something that weightlifting was missing.' Kelly Ihaka-Pitama challenged the thinking of those running weightlifting in NZ during her residency. Photo: Thomas Hamill Photography Ihaka-Pitama was working as a team leader in freight forwarding when she got talking to Simon Kent, the president of Weightlifting New Zealand, who also coaches at the Papatoetoe club. With her business background, Kent thought she'd be perfect for the Women in High Performance residency experience – working for weightlifting's national body. 'But I was also studying, working, training and being a mum to my kids,' says Ihaka-Pitama, who was studying health science majoring in integrated health, and had two daughters, aged 21 and 17. 'But then my heart said, 'Yes, I want to give this a go',' she says. 'It took me six weeks to complete the forms… I'm an overthinker. I didn't really know what I was getting into.' Ihaka-Pitama's successful application led to two part-time roles – one as general manager of high performance development at Weightlifting NZ; the other within High Performance Sport NZ. The latter was a chance for Ihaka-Pitama, South Auckland born and raised, to share her local knowledge with the HPSNZ Pathways team for six months, as they explored high performance opportunities in her area. 'I'm grateful I took on this project because it gave me exposure to the high performance system. If I'd gone straight into Weightlifting NZ, I wouldn't have initially understood the HP processes,' says Ihaka-Pitama, who initially had to learn the 'new language' of high performance. 'It was challenging, learning from scratch, but what I learned was invaluable.' It wasn't easy for Ihaka-Pitama hearing that south Auckland athletes in high performance sport were encouraged to leave south Auckland to be better. 'That kind of hurt, because I've been living there my entire life, and there were high performance athletes who had stayed and been successful,' she says. 'But understanding how high performance rolls after seeing it and being amongst it, I get it now.' Ihaka-Pitama's work at Weightlifting NZ, as the sport's first fulltime employee, was a game-changer, Kent says. 'Before Kelly, we had volunteers trying to deliver high performance outcomes,' says the weightlifting performance coach. 'It's often not the glamorous stuff, but stuff that needs to be done that can slip through the cracks. Part of the role was sometimes rolling up your sleeves and helping out at a club competition. 'It's been a massive transition for Kelly. She'd just started coming to the club and had a real enthusiasm for the sport and a willingness to learn. Her logistics background definitely brought the processes we needed.' Kelly Ihaka-Pitama walks through the gym while NZ's top lifters train. Photo: Thomas Hamill Photography Ihaka-Pitama went through a process of figuring out how to lead in weightlifting. As part of the residency, she did the 360-degree leadership assessment that highlighted her strengths, but also 'what I lacked, what I hid behind and ran away from,' she says. She spent six weeks working with Helene Wilson, HPSNZ's Women in High Performance lead, to help her recognise who she was as a leader. 'I discovered why I had reactive tendencies towards a situation, and how I could adapt to a situation in a better way. How to move forward and say, 'Hey, I want to do this' or approaching a coach who may be difficult to work with, or speaking to an athlete who's just missed out on selection,' Ihaka-Pitama says. 'Some of those conversations are quite hard if you don't understand yourself as a leader. 'Understanding who I was contributed to me becoming a better leader, because it became more natural to me and authentic to who I was. I came across as me – Māmā Kells – rather than running away from an issue.' Ihaka-Pitama experienced growing pains working at a truly volunteer sport. But preparing the high performance plan for investment was where Ihaka-Pitama took the lead. 'When weightlifting's leaders met on how we would present the plan, I challenged the thinking to start from scratch, rather than use a strategy from yesteryear,' she says. Another key moment for Ihaka-Pitama came when she travelled with the New Zealand junior weightlifters to Europe in 2024 – spending a week at the training base of the Italian Olympic team, before the IWF world junior championships in Spain. 'The Italians were training on site with us, and I got to witness how other federations train and coach at a high performance level. And I preferred our way,' Ihaka-Pitama says. Her leadership was tested when two young New Zealand lifters failed to reach expectations at the world championships. 'When a couple of our athletes bombed out in the competition, I had to basically pull on every strength I could possibly think of, in order not to fall into a trap of feeling like that person I was at the beginning,' she says. 'It was difficult – I'd never been in such a high-pressured situation – and I needed to be the leader who was sympathetic, but also realistic. This is the athlete's job, they're here to perform and compete, but as a group, how do we wrap support around them, and explain to them it's okay to sit in disappointment and failure?' Olympian Megan Signal (right) has helped Kelly Ihaka-Pitama (left) in lifting leadership. Photo: Thomas Hamill Ihaka-Pitama learned from her roommate on that trip, Olympic and Commonwealth Games athlete Megan Signal, who now runs the Papatoetoe Olympic Weightlifting Club and manages projects for Weightlifting NZ. 'When we had two young girls struggle, Kelly saw very quickly how even after a great build-up, things can suddenly flip. And if you don't nip it in the bud then and there, you're going to have the continuum of a downward spiral,' Signal says. 'One night we all sat down and had an open conversation. Kelly walked away from that with her eyes opened – it was a big learning space for her.' Ihaka-Pitama was then able to take what she'd learned in Europe and apply it to the weightlifting community in New Zealand. 'I took that back home for other athletes who didn't perform to expectations at nationals. And I even used it for myself, when I bombed in competition,' she says. Signal has seen Ihaka-Pitama grow personally during her tenure at Weightlifting NZ, but the sport also benefitted from the skills she already had – athlete experience, logistics and people skills. 'Aside from Kelly's ability to put structures and policy in place, she's got a real warmth when it comes to building relationships with athletes, coaches and officials,' Signal says. 'So many of our high performance and pre-high performance athletes are under the age of 20, and trying to understand a document or a qualification process can be really intimidating. 'And Kelly's warmth just makes that so much easier. Being a woman, and a mum, and having the life experience she has, it's been very good for our sport.' Neroli King agrees. She's Clean Sport Officer for Weightlifting NZ and has known Ihaka-Pitama as a fellow Masters weightlifting competitor. 'We went away as joint team managers to an event, and we worked really well together, because she works so well with people. She has a more community-minded, personal approach with the athletes and she's a great communicator,' King says. 'The sport made huge strides forward during her time there because she's been able to create those connections. Being fulltime, she could concentrate on that.' Having a woman leading the sport's high performance space is a 'no-brainer' for King. 'Weightlifting in New Zealand now has more females than males and we strongly promote women in weightlifting,' says King, who's been part of the IWF Women's Commission. 'Having female leaders in this space is important. 'High performance is not a male-only space. And we're a sport that constantly breaks boundaries. And if that includes having Kelly in a high performance role, when other sports don't, then, yes, we'll own it. But she's also great at what she does.' NZ weightlifting coaches (from left) Gabrielle Peach and Megan Signal, with Kelly Ihaka-Pitama and athlete Medea Jones. Photo: Thomas Hamill Kent says changes are afoot in high performance environments that have so long been a male domain. 'Women have only been competing in weightlifting at the Olympics since Sydney 2000, so we're now at a point, 24 years on, where we're starting to see shifts, including more female coaches,' he says. 'Kelly has brought something quite different – the empathy, the relationship-building – where a male in the role might have said, 'No this is what HP needs to look like'. New Zealand was a little ahead of the curve with the upsurge of female lifters we have coming through, so we had to change our approach. And I think Kelly has really added to that.' As an athlete, Ihaka-Pitama is well aware the end goal in weightlifting is always the same – everyone gets three lifts of snatch, and clean and jerk; everyone wants to better their last lift. But it's what goes on in the background that can make a world of difference to a lifter's performance. 'It's about the things we can do on a day-to-day basis – the planning, and the strategies. It's about how can we actually make this better? What environment can we create for the athletes, so they get exposure to high performance? How can our coaches lead better?' she says. 'Our sport is growing exponentially, so we have to be better. We want Kiwis to choose weightlifting, and we'll also go out to the community and find them.' On a personal level, Ihaka-Pitama's development through the Women in High Performance Sport residency experience has been exponential, too. 'I've had huge personal growth. I'm not the same person I was when I first arrived. I was happy to stay in freight forwarding until I die; now I want to fight to stay in sport, to continue the work I started for the people in the sport, the relationships that have been forged, and what we're building for the next generation,' she says. 'There's a lot of good mahi happening within our sport – we're on the right path.' Now that her residency has finished, Ihaka-Pitama is back working in the freight industry – 'and genuinely happy,' she says. 'My involvement with Weightlifting NZ continues, and it's incredibly rewarding to witness the enduring impact of the past two-and-a-half years. The sport is gaining momentum, and emerging athletes are defying challenges to showcase their talent on a global stage. Their resilience and unwavering commitment inspire a new era of excellence. 'My passion for weightlifting remains resolute – I continue to train, compete and coach. And I don't see that changing anytime soon.' This story originally appeared on the High Performance Sport New Zealand website and is published with permission

Scoop

09-06-2025

• Scoop

Polio Vaccines Set To Arrive In PNG Next Week, Says Health Minister

Article – RNZ The World Health Organisation declared an outbreak of the disease in PNG last month. Papua New Guinea's health minister, Elias Kapavore, says polio vaccines are set to arrive in the country next week. The World Health Organisation declared an outbreak of the disease in PNG last month. The Post Courier reported that as of 6 June, 48 cases of acute flaccid paralysis – a condition characterized by rapid onset of muscle weakness or paralysis, but not a disease in itself – had been reported across 11 provinces. Of these, 20 tested negatives for poliovirus, and 28 remain under investigation. Kapavore said the primary objective is to protect children from paralysis and prevent further virus transmission. Kapavore said vaccines are scheduled to arrive between 16 and 20 June. The estimated cost for two rounds of the vaccination campaign is 88 million kina (US$21.4m). So far, 74 million kina has been secured through the PNG and Australian governments and from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, as well as technical and logistical support from WHO and UNICEF, including the full cost of the nOPV2 vaccine supply. During the recent World Health Assembly in Geneva, Kapavore presented PNG's national statement, reaffirming its commitment to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and advocating for cross-border coordination, especially with Indonesia. 'The genetic link to the Indonesian strain [of polio] highlights the urgency of strengthening biosecurity capacity at the Papua New Guinea-Indonesia border,' he said. 'We must scale up surveillance and immunisation at these points of entry through coordinated efforts by the Departments of Health, Agriculture, Defence, Immigrations and Border Security, to prevent future cross-border transmission of polio and other infectious diseases.' He called upon every MP to actively support vaccination and awareness efforts in their constituencies. Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation has raised concern about comebacks of vaccine-preventable disease in east Asia and the Pacific. In the first months of 2025, countries like Cambodia, Mongolia, the Philippines and Vietnam have reported a sharp rise in measles cases compared with the same period last year. UNICEF regional director for East Asia and the Pacific, June Kunugi, said measles and polio are highly infectious. 'And children are paying the price for gaps in coverage, delayed care, and misinformation. No child should suffer or die from a disease we know how to prevent.'