Aranui focus of Fono

A cold rainy day failed to dampen the spirit that 130 people showed for Aranui when they turned up at the Positively Pacific Aranui Fono in May.

Young and old from various Pacific Island groups turned out from local schools and homes in the area to the Wainoni-Aranui Family Centre to share their thoughts on Aranui.

The Fono was hosted by the Aranui Community Trust together with the City Council, Housing New Zealand, Work and Income New Zealand, the Community Employment Group, Pacific Island Evaluation, and the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs.

These different agencies and the Council found that, despite having poured money into running various programmes to help strengthen Aranui, few Pacific Island people were participating in them.

The Fono aimed to find out why this was the case and to ask the community directly what was needed to encourage their participation and ownership of their community and its welfare.

Sky TV presenter of NRL, Peter Ropati, as keynote speaker, started off the day by challenging Aranui’s young people to use the knowledge of what could often be a harsh Pacific Island upbringing to work for choices in their life.

Niu FM PacDrive DJ, Sela Alo, ensured that the day stayed upbeat, telling people at the meeting to aim for perfection, and settle only for excellence.

Once split into groups of young and old, women and men, the Aranui Pacific Island community provided some valuable feedback that the Council v and the agencies involved will use for their longterm planning.

Aranui Trust member and part of the organising group, Earl Simpson, said the organising group would in the next few weeks assess the feedback to ascertain what could be resolved quickly. All other feedback would provide a good basis for long-term planning in Aranui for all these agencies.