Tāfesilafa’i

When COVID-19 hit in 2020, it exposed and deepened inequities that Aoga Amata (Samoan language preschools) had long been navigating. Faiaoga (teachers) were working without the resourcing, professional learning infrastructure, and system support available to their mainstream ECE counterparts. The professional development on offer was designed for - and around - western pedagogical frameworks, leaving faiaoga without support that recognised or built on Samoan cultural knowledge and ways of working.

Tāfesilafa'i was the response - a community of care for Samoan early childhood teachers, and a living network where faiaoga meet regularly to share cultural knowledge, build resources, and deepen confidence in culturally centred pedagogy. It combines professional development, social support, and research.

Through this structure, faiaoga moved into a model of collective strength, reclaiming confidence in Fa'a Samoa (Samoan way of life) as a legitimate and powerful basis for early learning.

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“Now we feel confident and empowered to use our own pedagogies that are fundamentally grounded in our Samoan values, language, culture, and spirituality." — Faiaoga (teacher).

Impact

The Tāfesilafa’i initiative has achieved tangible, community‑verified improvements in teacher wellbeing, confidence, and cultural identity. The 2022 Healthy Families Waitākere Evaluation found that it revitalised language use, strengthened professional networks, and improved early learning environments across Auckland’s Aoga Amata (Samoan language preschools). Teachers reported reduced isolation, renewed motivation, and deeper relationships with colleagues, families, and children - outcomes that strongly align with the Action Plan for Pacific Education 2020–2030 priorities of cultural safety, inclusion, and workforce empowerment.

Aoga Amata participating in Tāfesilafa’i saw increased roll growth and greater parent involvement - bucking national trends of declining early childhood attendance post‑COVID‑19. Through shared talanoa sessions, teachers expressed pride in their identities and greater autonomy in integrating fa’a Samoa into teaching and wellbeing practices.

The initiative's communications work brought long-standing structural barriers facing Aoga Amata into public view. Following the initiative's media and videography coverage, the Education Review Office initiated direct engagement with SAASIA – the national network for Samoan language preschools - to explore what a culturally grounded approach to Aoga Amata assessments could look like - responding to what faiaoga had identified through talanoa as one of the initiative's earliest and most significant stressors.

The International English Language Testing System requirements that had prevented Samoan-fluent teachers from working in Aoga Amata were similarly named by faiaoga as a critical barrier, elevated through media coverage, and taken into formal advocacy by Healthy Families Waitākere and SAASIA during the consultation process. Amendments followed: new rules now allow Pacific teachers to demonstrate English proficiency through alternative evidence - including testimonies and recognised education backgrounds from specific Pacific nations - reducing the system's reliance on IELTS scores as the sole gateway to teaching in language nests.

Influence

Tāfesilafa’i has become a national exemplar of Pacific innovation in practice.

The Tāfesilafa'i storytelling process has become a touchstone for culturally led communication design, demonstrating that Pacific stories achieve greater impact when told in their natural languages, through community-guided creative processes, and shared on diverse platforms.

It serves as inspiration to treat storycraft as an integral part of systems change rather than post-project promotion.

Organisation

Tāfesilafa’i is a health and wellbeing initiative supported by Healthy Families Waitākere and SAASIA, the national Aoga Amata network.

Healthy Families Waitākere secured funding, brokered strategic partnerships, and created the conditions for the initiative to grow. SAASIA held the cultural backbone - activating and coordinating the Community of Care, working entirely in Samoan, and grounding everything in Fa'amalama o Tofāmanino a Samoa. By the initiative's end, SAASIA had taken full leadership - the model designed from the outset to be community-led and self-sustaining.

Healthy Families Waitākere partners with local people to drive sustainable change that is owned by community - not delivered to it. Its work carries an explicit focus on improving Māori health and reducing inequity so that systems and structures meet everyone's needs.

Healthy Families Waitākere is led by Tuia Waitākere (formerly Sport Waitākere) in West Auckland.

The storytelling was designed to champion and elevate the structural shifts Aoga Amata needed - changes to policy, resourcing, and recognition that would enable genuine health and wellbeing for faiaoga and the tamaiti in their care. Tāfesilafa'i's narrative brought the world of Aoga Amata into public view: the daily acts of care, the collective spirit of faiaoga, and the case for why culture is an enabler of health and wellbeing in early learning environments.

On another level, Tāfesilafa'i is a series of stories told through documentary, photography, writing, media engagement and social storytelling. Each element holds a different piece of the narrative: the written form speaks to systems change, while the visual stories communicate emotion, pride, and belonging.

When faiaoga are grounded in their own cultural knowledge and supported by their peers, tamaiti benefit: research consistently shows that teacher wellbeing is one of the strongest protective factors in children's health and early learning outcomes.

Purpose

Context and challenges

When Tāfesilafa’i began in 2019, Samoan early childhood teachers were under immense pressure following the challenges of the COVID pandemic and long-standing inequities in recognition, language retention, and resourcing. Healthy Families Waitākere recognised that while teachers were deeply dedicated, their wellbeing and cultural leadership were overlooked within mainstream early education.

The story of Tāfesilafa’i sought to change this narrative: to honour Samoan teachers as cultural custodians safeguarding language, identity, and community wellbeing

What makes it stand out

Rather than translating the Samoan experience for mainstream audiences, the communications invited English-speaking audiences into it - through language, storytelling, and cultural practice - so that the case for change could be understood on its own terms.

Tāfesilafa'i was told across multiple mediums intentionally designed for different audiences including,

A written case study for sector peers, describing the initiative’s systems impact and conceptual framework.
A short social media video to engage Pacific families emotionally through imagery, music, and voice in fa’a Samoa.
A long-form video featuring teachers and community voices telling the story in their own words.
Two articles in The Spinoff bringing the structural barriers facing Aoga Amata to a national audience - naming the systemic inequities in resourcing, recognition, and policy that faiaoga had identified through the initiative.

This layered communication approach demonstrates how the same story can move between data, art, and lived experience.

Co-design

Tāfesilafa'i was co-designed with faiaoga and SAASIA - the initiative's direction, priorities, and focus areas shaped collectively through talanoa and fa'afaletui. The storytelling was then designed to amplify what that process surfaced: the barriers faiaoga named, the strengths they claimed, and the shifts they needed to see.

Healthy Families Waitākere's role was to backbone, facilitate, and document - ensuring what faiaoga named found its way into public systems and policy conversations.

Why
it works

Tāfesilafa'i treated storytelling as both method and outcome - the process of telling collectively was itself part of how faiaoga rebuilt confidence in their own cultural knowledge and pedagogy. Every element, from talanoa sessions to media outreach, was grounded in trust, relationship, and Fa'a Samoa.

Centres faiaoga as co-designers, storytellers, and evaluators - not subjects of the story but its authors.
Operates within Samoan language, etiquette, and spirituality, rather than translating Samoan experience into mainstream frameworks.
Connects grassroots experience directly to regional and national policy - the stories faiaoga told became the evidence base for structural change.
Embodies alofa and tautua: care and service as the organising principles of both the initiative and its communications.

Values-led narrative architecture

The communications approach was grounded in a consistent values architecture - fairness, equity, and collective wellbeing - drawn from Schwartz's Theory of Basic Human Values.

These values didn't shift across audiences; what shifted was the register and evidence through which they were expressed.

The Spinoff articles made the fairness case through structural evidence. Social content made the case for belonging and collective care through story and image. The written case study spoke to sector and funders through a systems change frame.

Each output followed the same narrative sequence: vision, values, barrier, solution - ensuring that regardless of platform or audience, every piece of communication was pulling in the same direction.