Taiuli Strategic Plan

There is a leap of faith for a community to allow someone from outside into their midst, to share their stories, values and future aspirations. Vulnerability is needed to share those stories and values and the community takes a leap faith to do so. However, those stories and values intrinsically form the foundations of future aspirations. To make integration a comfortable experience the community engagement and master planning process must be framed on traditional cultural practices. This requires the master planner to take a leap of faith and step away from their own cultural experience and put trust in the community’s process and cultural practice. They must get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable and unsure but to have faith that the processes you will deliver will result in the outcomes they need. This is what ground-up, community driven, master planning looks like compared to top-down technical driven master planning processes. The Taiuli Strategic Plan was a community driven process deeply infused by traditional Tokelau processes. The final master plan is their document, written in their way, infused with their language and stories, their values and most importantly their aspirations moving forward. There is privilege in being part of it, to have been given their knowledge and stories, to be part of the community to support them in the writing of this community vision document, a road map for their future.