Te Aorerekura Action Plan 2025 – 2030 published
One figure stands out for Pacific peoples in the Government's Te Aorerekura Action Plan 2025-2030 - Breaking the Cycle of Family Violence. The statistic reveals that Pacific children are 4.8 times more likely to die from child abuse and neglect than children of other ethnicities.
The report, released in the second Action Plan by Karen Chhour, the Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence, states that Pacific peoples disproportionately experience material hardship which can exacerbate some forms of violence.
Pasefika Proud continues its involvement in future initiatives acknowledging the power of cultural values and strength in supporting our Pacific peoples to thrive and supporting communities to develop and lead their own solutions for addressing violence and improving wellbeing.
Our strategic focus in 2025 includes a number of key initiatives, they include;
- Pacific community strategies and action plans taking a holistic approach to contributing factors to family violence impacting Pacific peoples, in partnership with ethnic-specific Pacific communities
- Community mobilisation family prevention initiatives - Pacific communities taking leadership in the implementation of solutions and practice to keep people safe and resilient
- Support and enhancement of Pacific collectives to strengthen the working in partnership for collective impact on family violence prevention - inclusive of capability building, test and learn, information and evidence
- Evaluation - working with Pacific communities on determining and gathering evidence through the 10 years evaluation, real-time evaluation, and Pacific community plans
This is all aligned with Pacific Prosperity strategic actions to make sure our people are safe, resilient and can prosper. Pasefika Proud experience will be crucial as the Government accepts that data and insights will need to reflect the experience and priorities of different people, communities, and population groups, if the overall 25-year national strategy to eliminate family violence and sexual violence (FV/SV) is to be met.
Minister Chhour promised to do ''everything in my power'' to rid Aotearoa of intergenerational family violence and sexual violence, and her words echo the thoughts and intention of Pasefika Proud.
Particularly as it is believed up to 56 per cent of women in Aotearoa experience intimate partner violence at some stage of their lives.
''Having spoken to many organisations doing good work at the forefront of preventing, and responding to, violence, I am clear that the solutions are to be found in communities," the Minister said in her foreword to the report.
''Victims/survivors of violence need to know they can get the right help, when, and where, they need it. Too many people are falling through the cracks. This plan ... provides a clear pathway to achieve real results."
The report identifies seven focus areas that will guide the Government over the next five years - Investing and Commissioning Well, Keeping People Safe, Stopping Violence, Protecting Children and Young People, Strengthening Our Workforce, taking Action on Sexual Violence, Preventing Violence Before It Starts.
Over the next two years, Te Puna Aonui will bring together government agencies to focus on the first three of these, as they have been identified as areas that need deep collaboration in order to meet the requirements of the plan.
For Investing and Commissioning Well the report said it was crucial that the $1.3 billion the Government invested annually in FV/SV services was being put into areas that worked and that it stopped doing things that were not effective. A review of FV/SV spending across Government would identify opportunities to prioritise where funding would have the most impact for people and communities.
In Keeping People Safe, the report acknowledged that no single agency or organisation had all the abilities to prevent violence, so the aim was to improve multi-agency responses in partnership with local organisations to better manage risk, so people got the right support at the right time.
For Stopping Violence, the report said the simple target was to firmly focus on stopping people who use violence. This may mean holding people to account for their actions by strengthening legal powers, as well as providing the right support and intervening early to try and help people change their behaviour.
Following the release of the plan Women's Refuge Chief Executive Dr Ang Jury told RNZ that while parts of the plan were "useful" she would like there to be far more investment and focus on prevention work, while Grenville Hendricks speaking for Shine said more money should be spent on children and those impacted by family violence.
DOWNLOAD – Te Aorerekura Action Plan 2025 - 2030
PASEFIKA PROUD – Our Families, Our People, Our Responsibility
Introduced in 2011, Pasefika Proud was designed and developed in partnership with the Pacific community across the motu. It has been shaped by the voice of our Pacific people coming together to share community knowledge and practices relevant and appropriate to Pacific achieving meaningful change to prevent family violence. It is a platform that provides an opportunity for Pacific peoples to highlight clear aspirations and what is required to effect positive change based on cultural values and principles.
In 2019, Pathways for Change was developed and launched to set the five-year direction of Pasefika Proud. It has a strong alignment with the government’s key priorities and targets i.e., employment, reduced violent crime, reduced child and youth offending, and education.
The vision is for ‘Pacific families and communities are safe, resilient and enjoy wellbeing” and it is founded by a clear theory of change that is based around Pacific cultural values, principles, and concepts. It reaffirms the focus and effort towards the importance of community leading solutions at all facets to effect positive change, and to inform government on how and what support required. The approach continues to be:
- Community led
- Strengths based
- Focus on Pacific diversity
Key to the delivery of Pathways for Change was the development of ethnic specific Pacific Community Plans which are community-led and owned. MSD through Pasefika Proud, work alongside and support eight ethnic specific communities in the development and implementation of their respective Pacific Community Plans.
The plans acknowledge and reflect all the contributing factors that impacted Pacific families’ safety, resilience, and improved quality of life and preventing violence requires a holistic, multilayered, and national approach from individual attitudes and behaviours, social norms, cultures and practices, policies, and the system.
PACIFIC COMMUNITY PLANS
Pasefika Proud are committed to continued support of Pacific communities in Aotearoa New Zealand to determine their unique community aspirations and implement community-led solutions to achieve them.
The Pacific community plans are a key mechanism for this – our journey began with the Maneaba Strategic Action Plan for Kiribati communities in New Zealand in 2016, Te Olaga Ola Filemu the Tuvalu Family Violence Prevention Plan in 2019, the Kāiga Tokelau Wellbeing National Strategic Plan and Lalawa Ni Tiko Vinaka the National Fijian Wellbeing Plan in 2022, and most recently, Moui Olaola the National Niue Strategic Wellbeing Plan in 2023.
Pacific community plans in process for 2025 include Samoa, Tonga, and Cook Island.
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