On June 23, the Uptempo team hosted our first ever family fiafia afternoon. The event was our first opportunity since COVID to bring all our ‘aiga (families) and partners together to mark the start of our journey together.
Uptempo officially launched in July 2021 and has grown to a network of over 700 ‘aiga and organisation partners in the Uptempo village. The Uptempo team plans to host quarterly ‘aiga events to help build connections, understanding, and momentum behind our goal of growing intergenerational wealth and well-being for Pasifika.
Uptempo is a four-year programme, funded by MBIE and The Peter Mckenzie Project and is founded on the following key principles:
Pasifika ‘aiga are experts in their own lives We recognise that Pasifika ‘aiga have insights that come through lived experiences, indigenous knowledge and creativity, that will help to identify opportunities and develop solutions through active participation in the changes required to our systems.
A whole of family approach We want to demonstrate that a focus on wellbeing and culture is critical. We will take a holistic integrated approach that places Pasifika aiga at the heart of what we do.
Lifelong learning is essential Building Pasifika adult learner’s confidence and supporting them to become lifelong learners is essential to help Pasifika people continue to progress and remain relevant in the workforce. Uptempo recognises that traditional education models have not served Pasifika well. By partnering with values-aligned training providers, Uptempo will seek to understand how we can create engaging, positive training experiences.
Employers are central Helping employers to create workplaces that value Pasifika culture, knowledge and wisdom is fundamental to attracting, retaining and enabling Pasifika to progress in the work force. Uptempo works with willing employers to identify and test different models.
Government policy, processes and systems needs to change Systems change requires deep collaboration with government to implement our learning, which infuses big data, lived experience and best practice, across our systems to gain scale and support all Pasifika to thrive.