What’s Up

Today I spent a morning at Manurewa High School with Michel Mulipola, talking about the power of storytelling.

On Thursday I attended an event called the May Meet Up at the Mangere Arts Centre. It was a gathering of artists and people with dreams from Mangere-Otahuhu and was such an inspiring evening.  We heard about these awesome projects that are happening in our community and country like: Anonymouz creating a soundtrack to help blind people…

This week I spent time with Year 6 students at Southern Cross Junior Campus in Mangere.  We worked on a project called Pasifika Heroes in Homes, set up by school social worker, Tupou Evans. The children chose heroes from the Pasifika Heroes books and wrote about how these heroes inspire them. It’s really exciting to…

Awesome day today with Jono Soo Choon and the team who came to our school and performed the Samoan legend The Eel and Sina. We hosted the show and had children from Rongomai Primary come up and see the show too. It’s really important for Pacific children to see Pacific stories on stage so they…

I spent today at a Boys and Reading workshop at the National Library. It was awesome to see boys inspired by books and to share exciting ideas with like minded friends: Linda, Henry and Dave from Books in Homes and the team from the NZ Book Council.

It was a real blessing to be invited to participate in this year’s Auckland Writers Festival. I took a writing workshop and did two talks. When I taught English at Tangaroa College, I used to bring my students to this festival. I remember thinking one time, “Man it would be cool to be part of…