Song writing used to combat bullying

Transcript

Song writing is being used by a New Zealand based mentoring group to help Pasifika school students combat bullying.

The Auckland based Aha Music Mentoring programme has 12 schools involved and is overseen by the newly formed Pasifika Foundation which launches tomorrow.

Music mentor, TJ Taotua, told Daniela Maoate-Cox the programme aims to build the self-esteem and confidence of vulnerable young people by writing music.

TJ TAOTUA: The Pasifika Foundation was created as a result of increased demand for the Aha Music Mentoring Programme, last year we piloted a programme that used the vehicle of music to engage young people and one of the messages that we used was anti-bullying. So we did that with one of the local schools in central Auckland and so the Foundation was created. So the Foundation was founded on the vision of improving health, education and social outcomes for vulnerable Pacific youth and family.

DANIELA MAOATE-COX: What constitutes a vulnerable person?

TT: With our experience of the programme they've obviously been picked by teachers within the schools as potential students that we would need to have some strategies around engagement for, they're quite disengaged. We don't yet have a clear definition of vulnerable as in which types of vulnerable Pacific families [exist] but we have engaged with schools to identify, particularly with our anti-bullying programme, those students who have either been bullied, or students who have bully type behaviour and we've managed to pull some of those students together to work with.

DM-C: How do you use music to help those students?

TT: We run a six week programme and we've delivered this programme to 12 schools in the Auckland area, south, central and west. The first two weeks of the programme we engage the students through a song writing workshop and the whole process of that is to get all of their ideas around what type of theme, what type of style, music they want to write about, so it's an opportunity for them to talk about what they're in to, these are the artists they like, they like Bruno Mars or whatever artists they like at the time and we try to add those in.

DM-C: Are the students outgoing when they come to learn these songs or are they a bit shy?

TT: Some schools, in terms of the criteria of selecting students, some schools have selected vulnerable students that have been bullied, or students that have leadership qualities. Eighty percent of the schools that we do work with, a lot of the students haven't had any musical background as such but by the end of the programme they're right into it and that shows in the video, them having fun and enjoying themselves.