WelCom December 2021
Meet Porirua’s Bishop Viard College Year 13 student-entrepreneurs behind ‘The Hustle’ – an award-winning Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) business that incorporates Samoan stories, history and language.
In 2020, Malaga, Siose, Oliver, Fa’amanuia, Priscilla and Kade recognised a gap in the market for the representation of Samoan history and language. The team were inspired to share the story of tatau through selling stainless-steel drink bottles, as a vehicle to promote Samoan culture.
‘For many of our New Zealand-born Samoans there is a need to keep our language and culture alive. Our product is a solution to that. Many of us cannot speak our Samoan language. We knew about the Samoan tatau but not the depth we know about it now through our product and learning from our ‘aiga and community,’ says Siose.
In December 2020, they took home the National Excellence Award for Pasifika Business, out of 1000 companies at the YES awards. Malaga won the CEO of the Year Award, for creating their product, the Tatau Bottle.
The team shared their success story when they premiered their documentary on the big screen in November, and soon to be online.
The group plans to continue advocating for challenges faced by its community as well as making bottles and other essential items with cultural patterns from other Pasifika cultures, incorporating Tongan, Māori and Tokelauan designs.
Follow on: instagram.com/thehustle.bvc/