Tonya Toi believes members of the Wyndham Pasifika are natural survivors.
“We all grew up experiencing disasters, earthquakes, cyclones, hurricanes, we’ve all experienced that,” she said.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, many people from the Pacific Islands found themselves trapped in Australia, with no way to get home.
“Everything in this country costs money, even to leave,” Ms Toi said.
“Our organisation received numerous calls. We were just lost because we were just a new emerging organisation.”
As the president of the Pasifika Community of Australia, Ms Toi reached out to Wyndham council which connected the organisation to the Department of Human Services.
“From there, we were able to get food emergency relief, that was the start,” she said.
Ms Toi said the Pasifika community then decided to “get back to basics”.
“Usually when disasters happens we always look for two things. First is to the land, what did you grow? Second to the ocean, for a source of food,” she said.
“We started off with 15 backyard gardens and it grew from 15 to 200.”
But their project didn’t end there. On Saturday, May 28, the Pasifika community launched its new garden at the Penrose Community Centre.
“We wanted to have a space to plant our garden so that our community can come and all that emergency food relief we were receiving, we could have contributed if we had had a space,” Ms Toi said.
“It’s a first of its kind, to bring together Melanesia, Micronesian and Polynesian, it’s never happened to that capacity ever before, here was a collaboration united in a land that was officially ours.”
