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The Council for International Development said the most effective response to help Tonga is donate money. (Image: Tina Tiller)
The Council for International Development said the most effective response to help Tonga is donate money. (Image: Tina Tiller)

SocietyJanuary 19, 2022

Here’s how we can help Tonga

The Council for International Development said the most effective response to help Tonga is donate money. (Image: Tina Tiller)
The Council for International Development said the most effective response to help Tonga is donate money. (Image: Tina Tiller)

A number of groups in Aotearoa are offering a helping hand to Tonga following the recent volcanic eruption and tsunami, but where is the best place to direct your donations? Sela Jane Hopgood rounds up some legit options.

This is one of the worst volcanic eruptions the Pacific has experienced in decades. It’s estimated that up to 80,000 people have been affected by the latest catastrophe, with the full extent of damage and need yet to be determined.

Lord Fatafehi Fakafānua, the speaker of the legislative assembly of Tonga, released a statement explaining that what Tonga needs immediately is to provide its citizens with fresh drinking water and food. “More details on Tonga’s official disaster relief fund will be announced shortly, so that those looking to help can contribute directly to Tonga’s relief efforts,” he said.

He added that “to ensure the help kindly offered reaches those in need, we must ensure relief funds are verified, transparent and legitimate”. This is important to note, as there has been talk online of people claiming they’re raising funds for Tonga’s relief, yet providing no evidence or transparency as to where the money is going.

The Council for International Development (CID) is the umbrella organisation for Aotearoa’s aid charities and all its full members are code compliant, which means the public can be reassured that donations will reach the most vulnerable communities.

CID says that if New Zealanders want to help, the most effective response is to donate money rather than send stuff that may not be needed. “During previous Pacific emergencies, local businesses desperate for customers were undercut by donated overseas goods, many that were still available locally. These containers took up valuable wharf space, blocked vital humanitarian supplies coming through and in many cases, stuff not needed ended up in landfill,” CID spokesperson said.

According to the Australian Red Cross, it takes 10 people 70+ hours to sort through a container of unrequested goods, and they’re urging people to donate responsibly.

There are some great initiatives under way. Here’s where you can help out Tonga:

Aotearoa Tonga Relief Committee

Led by Labour MPs Jenny Salesa and ‘Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki, who are of Tongan descent, the committee consists of community leaders in Auckland who inform families in Aotearoa what Tonga needs, such as bottles of water, then collect and put in containers to ship over.

Kanongata’a-Suisuiki told The Spinoff that they’re currently waiting for a response from Tonga regarding what items are required, as well as finding avenues to have the containers transported to Tonga. “Our role is to provide opportunities for families here to send goods to their loved ones. We do accept monetary funds as well, in case people don’t want to buy items to donate.

For updates, head to the Aotearoa Tonga Relief Committee Facebook page.

New Zealand Red Cross/Tonga Red Cross Society

The non-governmental organisation aims to prevent and alleviate human suffering in Tonga. One of its main focuses is on disaster management and it supports communities throughout Tongatapu, Ha’apai, Vava’u, ‘Eua and Niuas.

Donations will go towards providing access to safe and clean drinking water, as much of Tonga’s drinking water has been contaminated by saltwater inundation caused by tsunami waves and ashfall from the eruption. Shelter is also a concern, particularly for those communities near the coast line.

Tonga Red Cross teams are on the ground supporting evacuations, providing first aid if needed and distributing prepositioned (procured locally) relief supplies such as tarpaulins, blankets, kitchen sets, shelter tool kits and hygiene kits for immediate need.

Donate to the Pacific Tsunami Appeal via Rīpeka Whero Aotearoa.

NZ Red Cross’s Pacific Tsunami Appeal to support the people of Tonga. (Photo: Supplied)

Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand

The Catholic agency for justice, peace and development has offered an immediate Solidarity Grant to Caritas Tonga and is also receiving donations, through its Pacific Relief Fund, to help with the aftermath of the natural disasters in Tonga.

Caritas Aotearoa NZ managed to get in touch with Caritas Tonga on Saturday and together they completed the prepositioning of emergency supplies at three locations in Tonga.

Donations can be made to Caritas online through the Pacific Relief Fund.

Pita Taufatofua

Australian-based Olympic athlete and Tongan flag bearer Pita Taufatofua, who started a Go Fund Me the day after the volcanic eruption and tsunami, says his focus is on what he can do from his current position. “That’s awareness and assistance. My focus is on the people of Tonga who will all need help to rebuild,” said Taufatofua.

“My father is the governor of Ha’apai, but he’s currently in Tongatapu and at this stage I haven’t heard from him, so in the meantime, I’m preparing for assistance for my country.”

Taufatofua aims to use the funds raised to address damage to critical infrastructure, schools and hospitals. He wants the donations to go towards those most in need.

So far, Taufatofua has raised over AU$300,000 (NZ$318,000) with a goal of reaching one million dollars. To donate, visit Tonga Tsunami relief by Pita Taufatofua.

Malakai Fekitoa

Former All Black Malakai Fekitoa, born and raised in Ha’apai and now living in England, has also started a Go Fund Me page to help his people back home.

In 12 hours, Fekitoa was able to raise over £8,000, (around NZ$16,000), with a goal of £50,000 to reach.

Fekitoa says he hasn’t had any communication with his mother in the last 24 hours and wants the donations collected to be used for aid such as material products for housing for vulnerable families.

To join Fekitoa’s fundraiser campaign, head to the Help Tonga, all of Tonga page.

All Black Malakai Fekitoa, in a match against Ireland. (Photo: Phil Walter/Getty Images)

Friends of Tonga

Friends of Tonga, a charitable non-profit organisation that promotes and provides access to education, literacy and development opportunities across the Kingdom, is an affiliate of the National Peace Corps Association (NPCA) of the United States. 

Friends of Tonga’s Facebook page shared an update that all peace corps staff in Tonga have been accounted for and are all safe. They’ve set up a  Hunga-Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic eruptions and tsunami disaster relief page on their website and are seeking donations, and will partner with organisations on the ground to figure out where best to distribute funds.

Tearfund New Zealand

A Christian non-profit organisation have outlined online how people can help with immediate relief for our Pacific neighbours in Tonga, for example donating $50 can provide a family with an emergency food ration and donating $70 can give clean drinking water to a family for a month.

Tearfund has established partners in Tonga who have responded to recent disasters and are well-positioned to respond to those in need.

To donate funds for affected Tongan communities, visit Tonga volcano emergency appeal.

This is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.

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Photo: Getty Image, additional design by Tina Tiller
Photo: Getty Image, additional design by Tina Tiller

OPINIONSocietyJanuary 19, 2022

How Covid vaccines upend our assumptions about protecting kids

Photo: Getty Image, additional design by Tina Tiller
Photo: Getty Image, additional design by Tina Tiller

Children shouldn’t be asked to protect the adults in their lives, goes the common argument. But why not?

The tweet was indignant, as commentary about children and Covid-19 tends to be. We, as a society, tend to get sensitive about kids, when we’re not ignoring them. And, as the child vaccination effort gets underway in New Zealand and parents are making decisions about whether and when to get their 5-11 year olds vaccinated, we’re finally talking about kids. So it’s time for us to start talking about how we’re talking about kids.

“Children should never ever be asked or told to do anything to protect anyone older than them.”

The tweet’s point was one I’ve seen a lot: children should be protected by adults, not the other way around. Children are at less risk of severe Covid-19 infection and so, the logic goes, the only reason to vaccinate them would be to protect adults. And children protecting adults is backwards, against the natural order of things, morally wrong. This might be a compelling way of thinking until we dig deeper into how this thinking is cultural.

As an anthropologist of childhood and child health, I study how we as a society think about and treat children. This is because our ideas about who children are and who they should be – what’s known as our social constructions of childhood – guide how doctors care for children, how policy-makers consider children’s needs, and even how parents make decisions about their children’s health. In my research observing sore throat clinics operating for rheumatic fever prevention, for example, I saw how our assumptions that children are passive recipients of care meant that policymakers forgot to consider how children will actually seek, resist or refuse care according to their own agendas. In my current research on childhood asthma, I see how doctors and parents grapple with the contradiction between cultural ideologies of children as people who cannot and should not be responsible for their own health and the reality that children must manage their own asthma, at least some of the time. Who we think children are matters because our ideas turn into real health effects in children’s bodies.

Humans sometimes struggle to recognise our own cultural ideas and values. We take for granted our own norms and attitudes, like the fish that doesn’t know it’s in water until it jumps into the air. Our ideas seem obvious, natural, until we visit another place or time and realise things like gender and sexuality and yes, childhood, are cultural, socially constructed. But we rarely talk about those ideas about childhood, so taken for granted they seem natural, that underlie our decision-making.

Our ideas about protecting children are culturally constructed, and relatively recent (Photo: Getty Images.)

So how are we thinking about children when it comes to vaccines?

I’ll leave it to the epidemiologists to explain in clinical terms why, even if we’re only looking at children as individual biological organisms, the very small risks of the vaccine to children aged 5-11 are still vastly outweighed by the risks of Covid-19 infection, including long Covid, paediatric multi-system inflammatory disorder, and a recent CDC report of elevated diabetes risk for children after Covid-19 infection. And, my paediatrician colleagues remind me, there are the indirect effects of Covid-19 infection, like missing school and social events, especially when kids have missed out on so much already.

But even if it weren’t true that individual children biologically benefit from the vaccine’s protections – is it bad to think that children might protect adults?

The idea that children should be protected isn’t bad per se. But it is culturally specific – like the fish jumping into the air, we can jump to other places and times and see that this is a fairly new and quite western idea, emerging around the 20th century and really taking off in the 80s and 90s “stranger danger” era. The problem is that this idea – that children should be protected – sounds so good that it prevents us from deeper critical thinking about what really protects children, who or what children should be protected from, and how, and with what consequences. The stranger danger moral panic has curbed the freedoms of generations of children who are now cloistered in child-friendly, supervised spaces, driven everywhere, excluded from public life, and able to build relationships with few adults who could be safe alternatives from whom to seek help. Never mind that the real danger to children is not from strangers at all – stranger kidnappings are exceptionally rare – but from abuse by relatives in their own home. Sometimes, in our enthusiasm to protect children, we inadvertently leave them more vulnerable.

To be sure, children are generally more vulnerable than adults, and so we should look out for them. But, when we think of them only as vulnerable, we overlook how we make them vulnerable. Often in the name of protection, we exclude them from public life, curtail their mobility, gatekeep their access to people and places and resources, and silence their voices. Because they’re vulnerable, we’ve left them the last group without the vaccine’s protection.

And, when we think only that children should always be protected and not protectors, we overlook the many ways that children can, do, and often want to protect the adults they care for. Because children know that when the adults they depend on for security and survival are protected, children are safer too. We are already asking children to protect us when we ask them to stay home, school remotely, stay out of shops, and wear masks. Children are already trying to protect us when they remind us to scan the QR codes, help us find our mask, or give us a cuddle after our vaccination.

Thinking more deeply about our ideas about risk also points to another way we’ve been imagining children – as isolated bodies whose only risk from Covid-19 is the biological effects of viral infection. This narrow view of who children are means we can mistakenly think that if children aren’t at risk of severe illness or death from Covid-19 then vaccination cannot benefit them.

Another way to think about children, though, is as members of families, communities, and our own society; as people whose wellbeing is interdependently connected to others; as people who both contribute to and benefit from healthy families and communities. Children need adults to be alive and healthy to care for them, to be able to go to work to support them, to love and be loved by them. Children need their teachers to be alive and health to help them learn. They need hospitals that have doctors and nurses and beds available for when they get injured or sick from something else. They need a society that is not circulating a virus that could mutate towards vaccine resistance or greater severity for children. This pandemic has demonstrated that as much as New Zealand neoliberal politics has pushed a construction of our society as an accumulation of individuals, we are an interdependent collective, and our individual health and wellbeing is inextricably tied to the health of our neighbour. And some of our neighbours are children.

It’s OK to acknowledge that we all protect each other.

But wait there's more!