Solomon Islands Children’s Books Project

St Matthew’s School, Hastings. So cool to share with kids about inspirational people like Israel Adesanya inside an inspirational venue like a church!

Would you like some free books with that bread and milk? During the COVID lockdown schools and libraries were closed and many of our young people lost access to books. I reached out to some of the Auckland Local Boards and other organisations to sponsor book packs – home libraries – so our youth would…

Tonight I went to watch Rosalina by the Sau e Siva Creatives at Mangere Arts Centre. The guys adapted the story from a legend in my book, Samoan Heroes. It’s pretty cool seeing the way they took the story from off the page and brought it to life on stage with a celebration of Samoan culture,…

Today we had a cool celebration of 4 bilingual children’s books I worked on with young people of Māori, Samoan, Chinese and Hindi heritage. The kaupapa of the books is how to survive natural disasters. The theme of the series is: You Ready? You can get copies from Auckland Emergency Management.

I’ve spent the last two days in Napier and Hastings encouraging young people to believe in themselves and find out who they are  through reading. Finished at Hastings Boys’ High School whose motto is Ākina. This motto was given to them by local iwi and is a call to paddlers who may be losing energy…