QuakeCoRE Seminar: Navigating in Unity to Activate Effective Emergency Response & Preparedness(2022)

QuakeCoRE Seminar Series: Navigating in Unity: Collaborating with Pacific Communities to Activate Effective Emergency Response and Preparedness - Siautu Alefaio, Petra Satele, Matt Luani (2022)
Presented by: Siautu Alefaio, Petra Satele, Matt Luani (all Massey University)
Earlier this year NIUPATCH sprung immediately into action after the January 15th Hunga Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai volcano eruption - ensuring relevant and accessible information was disseminated to affected communities in Tonga. This was possible only through collaborating with the Tongan diasporic community here in Auckland and with top scientists throughout Aotearoa. This response, as well as our collaboration with QuakeCoRE to help young Pasifika students at a South Auckland school start a podcast focused on urban resilience, will be highlighted in this presentation. The purpose of NIUPATCH is to shine a light on resilient and sustainable Pasifika communities by: leading different types of research that engage Pasifika communities; bridging the gap between academia and everyday realities by applying our core principle of NIU - Navigating In Unity; and contributing towards producing new knowledge and transformative change, to create safe spaces for Pacific people to thrive.
Siautu Alefaio-Tugia (Samoan lineage of Matautu-Tai, Sāsina, Manunu ma Fagamalo) is an Associate Professor of psychology and Associate Dean Pacific in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Massey University, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her research specialty is Pacific-Indigenous (PI) psychology in climates of change. Drawing on PI psychology, she combines extensive practice and academic experience to re-inform psychology from Pacific-indigenous knowledge frameworks, especially in forensic rehabilitation, family violence, disaster resilience, humanitarian response and climate change. Siautu has been awarded major research grants from, and acted as advisor to, various government, community and church organisations in Aotearoa New Zealand. She has published extensively on Pacific and psychology, Pacific diasporic disaster resilience, family violence prevention, wellbeing, and community-humanitarian response. She is a Rutherford Discovery Fellow and Global Fellow of the Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Studies (CHR&HS), Brown University. As a scholar-practitioner, Siautu has worked across various applied psychology contexts in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific. In 2016 she founded a Pacific research collective - NIUPATCH (Navigate In Unity: Pacific Approaches to Community-Humanitarianism), to shine a light on Pacific communities and the diaspora as resilient and sustainable mobilisers of change in a climate of complex disasters.
Petra Satele is of Samoan heritage from the villages of Faleapuna and Vailuutai. She is an Assistant Lecturer at Massey University in the School of Psychology, where she also works as Tautai Pasifika (a Pacific-student Advisor), and as coordinator of NIUPATCH (Navigate In Unity: Pacific Approaches to Community-Humanitarianism) - a research unit with the purpose of highlighting resilient Pacific communities in the disaster space. Petra has a Bachelor and Master of Science in Psychology, and is currently a doctoral student at Massey University - her research examines disaster response throughout the Pacific, and explores resilience through a Pacific lens in the context of disaster.
Matt Luani is a New Zealand born Samoan hailing from Porirua, Wellington. He is a PhD student and a QuakeCoRE scholar - the first Pasifika recipient to have received a PhD QuakeCoRE scholarship. Matt has an Honours degree in Visual Communication Design, and a Master of Design from Massey University. He is currently a Design Communication/Pacific Researcher with Joint Centre for Disaster Research (JCDR) and NIUPATCH at Massey University. His work and research uses various design mediums including posters, web design, photography and videos to help bridge the gap in understanding for Pasifika communities in the disaster management space.
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