Professional and personal lives collide on road safety initiative

For Henderson Constable Faga Siaki, the intersection of his personal and professional lives resulted in an innovative road safety programme known as Ola Fa’asaoina or ‘to save lives’.

Ola Fa’asaoina beat stiff competition to take the top place in the ‘emerging community safety and/or prevention initiative or programme’ category of the New Zealand Community Safety and Injury Prevention Awards.

Not bad for something that began with a parking ticket.

In July 2005, worshippers at the Henderson Samoan EFKAS church were repeatedly ticketed while attending services. They turned to fellow church-goer, Faga, and Kitch Cuthbert of the Waitakere City Council for help.

“Worshippers were getting tickets but they didn’t understand why and didn’t know what to do with them,” says Faga.

“We worked together to develop solutions, which included the Council implementing parking restrictions to make parking more accessible to church members.”

Constable Faga Siaki with a child’s car seat. A car seat bank is one of

the initiatives of Ola Fa’asaoina - ‘to save lives’.

The initiative was so successful that the Henderson worshippers got together with their sister congregation in Ranui and decided to tackle other road safety issues, such as driving without a licence, when and how to use child car restraints and the often lethal combination of youth, alcohol, drugs and speed.

“A lack of information and language barriers meant it was often difficult for the community to understand the relevant rules,” says Faga.

The Church established a committee including representatives of ACC, Police, Land Transport NZ, Plunket and the Waitakere City Council, which developed a module-based programme.

Innovative approaches included training bi-lingual driver licensing tutors and offering cheaper learn-to-drive courses. Establishing a car seat bank with 35 seats and running a ‘Belt-o-meter’ to encourage the use of safety belts were other key strategies.

The Church also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with ACC, which allows the corporation to work more closely with them on road safety and injury prevention.

Faga says everyone involved in Ola Fa’asaoina - from worshippers to local and national government representatives - is thrilled with the overwhelmingly positive outcome.

“We’ve had staggering results, with 116 church members achieving their learners licence, 42 have gone on to achieve their restricted licence and there’s been an increase in the use of car child restraints, from 74 percent to 96 percent.

“But perhaps the biggest win has been the greater road safety awareness and the creation of a general safety culture, not only on the roads but also within the home with a focus on issues like falls prevention and safety awareness models such as family violence.”

Ola Fa’asaoina is now being rolled out in other Pacific churches in Waitakere and the North Shore, but the model can be applied to any community.