A Young Samoan who advocates for mental health issues wins Oceania S!nergy Competition with her Project Poutu Malosi, and will soon be heading to the international stage.
Vaetoifaga Apelu, 19, from the villages of Vaitele uta, Fausaga – Safata, and Safotu in Savaii, recently took the top spot in the Oceania S!nergy Competition representing Samoa as part of the Non-Governmental Organisation (N.G.O.) Youth and Students for Peace Samoa.
The N.G.O. is active in 6 nations of Oceania and two more nations with occasional projects. In Samoa, there are currently nine executive members and 40 registered members.
S!nergy is a brand program of the International Association of Youth and Students for Peace. The organisation was founded by Dr. Hak Ja Ha Moon to raise young leaders of character who embody the values of responsibility, integrity, service, and empathy.
S!nergy promotes these values is to encourage youth to use their passion, talents, and skills to solve issues seen in their communities and nations. It begins with a program called “Peace Designers” where they share the value of conducting a “peace project” and are given a step-by-step guide to how they can create an effective solution to those problems.
The program teaches them how to create a good presentation to explain their project and convince sponsors and volunteers to invest money and time into it.
S!nergy is an engaging and dynamic public-speaking competition that empowers youth to present their ideas in a professional setting. These presentations share a solution to a societal problem related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. There are several levels of competition starting from national, sub-regional, regional to international levels. At each level, winners receive a cash prize as a seed fund for their project and the chance to compete at the next level.
Using the Peace Designers model, Miss Apelu’s team identified suicide as one of the growing concerns in Samoa due to the lack of understanding and ways to prevent it from happening. They had researched strategies to maintain a happy, healthy life and with the help of personal experience, came up with the pillars offered by ‘Poutu Malosi’.
Poutu Malosi refers to a strong pillar, derived from the cultural context of a Samoan fale where each pillar serves as an upright support for the fale itself. To help manage mental health in a person the project offers possible pillars that support their mental wellbeing,” Ms. Apelu said.
She added that the ultimate goal of the project is to make available the verbal and physical pillars to help youth manage their mental health problems.
“A youth can find a pillar from the program especially if they want to talk about their emotions/feelings or even the means of expressing them; this is really the heart of Poutu Malosi project. I am aware of the unhealthy ways that youths mostly turn to such as substance use, or worse, suicide. To be frank, this gap allows the issue to deteriorate and the cycle repeats again,” she said.
“The issue is a battle in silence and in my own opinion, the societal stigma does not help. So many of Samoa’s youths that have passed away due to suicide are teenagers that I was connected to in someway and most of what I read/see on my social media is relative to the matter; very unfortunate. I remain optimistic to what Poutu Malosi can do for our youths, it’s a phase we are all going through and not who we really are.”
Part of the project is what she calls “Plan Blue”, which is a verbal approach that looks at psychiatric and spiritual practices that will be provided by potential or collaborative partners.
“The project offers a variety of pillars that will not be limited to physical but also, verbal methodologies. It all returns back to the context of the name Poutu Malosi. You define your strongest pillar/poutu malosi, it’s how a youth would find support/comfort because everyone is different and so are the sources of their triggers,” she said.
Ms. Apelu received AUD $300 for winning the Oceania competition to help start her project and moved on to the Asia Pacific regional competition. There, she competed with participants in South East Asia and Oceania who also presented amazing projects. She won the competition, winning USD $700 and a place at the International S!nergy competition in April.
“I have already secured partnerships with two of our potential partners – Prayer Mothers & Tong II Moo Do Martial Arts Samoa – the day before Level 3 lockdown became effective in Samoa, and it is only a matter of time to receive AUD and USD funds from winning the S!NERGY Oceania & S!NERGY Asia Pacific Competitions,” she said.
“The international competition is expected to be held in April, and if we are fortunate enough to win again, we will have sufficient funds and support to implement the project within the set timeframe. One essential step of the project’s call for action is Promoting Awareness. We are planning to extend our publicity outreach. Other than this, we also need to promote on social platforms which I know are most accessible by the youths of Samoa.”
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