At this year’s Addiction Leadership Day in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Le Va staff highlighted the need for Pacific‑led solutions, noting that current services are often reactive and crisis‑oriented, and can lack culturally grounded healing.
Mark Esekielu – Le Va senior manager mental health and addiction – and Nicholas Cao – Le Va clinical lead – gave an overview of Le Va and its initiatives that support the addiction workforce and leadership pipeline.
Le Va clinical lead Nicholas Cao shares his insights
These include Le Va’s Futures That Work scholarship programme, the Addiction and Problem Gambling Harm scholarships, and the Le Tautua leadership programme – all designed to grow capability, capacity and future leaders in the sector.
The pair shared insights from the mental health and addiction stream at Le Va’s Global Pacific Solutions conference, highlighting that in responding to addiction and mental health challenges, we can draw on ancestral intelligence and ancient cultural practices for healing and support.
Future models of care, they said, should be designed by Pacific people – rooted in kinship, culture, spirituality and healing traditions – while being strengths‑based, creative and digitally fluent to meet the needs of future generations.
Organised by the National Committee for Addiction Treatment (NCAT), with secretariat support from Te Pou, there are three Addiction Leadership Days each year.
These one-day events provide an opportunity to deepen professional networks, as well as share sector updates and research, while strengthening and developing leadership.
The day also featured national leaders, including Phil Grady (Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora), who outlined a programme of work to improve system performance, integrate services and strengthen the mental health and addiction workforce.
Dr Bonnie Robinson of The Salvation Army presented social statistics linking housing, poverty and family violence to addiction harm, while Cory James and Cera James (Tuhiata Mahiora) explored the importance of mana motuhake (self‑determination) in client‑led care.
The event brought together practitioners, sector leaders, decision makers and lived experience voices to share strategies, innovations and a vision for a more equitable, culturally grounded addiction sector.
Learn more about Le Va’s work in the mental health and addiction sector: Mental health and addiction.
The call to action to minimise the impact of alcohol in our communities is longstanding – especially for our Māori and Pasifika whānau, people living with disabilities or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), and people living in our most deprived communities in Aotearoa.
For many this is a generational problem with wide, deep and intertwining roots. Many of us have our own stories and stories of whānau whose lives, families and communities have been impacted in some way by alcohol related harm.
Fa’afetai tele lava to the Minister for Mental Health, Hon Matt Doocey, to the Alcohol Healthwatch Committee and partners for bringing together all strands of the community – kaumātua, lived experience whānau, researchers and workforce – to talanoa at the Alcohol and Mental Health Symposium held at Parliament in May.
It was uplifting to hear from future leaders who shared their wealth of experience especially from a lived experience perspective and to feel the breadth of support and advocacy for stricter policies around alcohol sales.
Learning about initiatives like Influence Engine in Australia – a publicly available conflict of interest online tool that sheds light on relationships between politicians and the alcohol industry – and hearing of local initiatives that are holistic, culturally grounded and prevention focused such as E Tipu E Rea Whānau Services in Tāmaki Makaurau – was invaluable.
The symposium’s theme was ‘Mā te wai, ka ora: Transforming our waters, transforming ourselves’. Transforming our waters requires community-wide self-reflection that starts with ourselves.
What messages do we support in our communities when it comes to alcohol? Do our individual/whānau/community actions consistently align with our desire for safe communities free from alcohol harm?
Asking ourselves these challenging questions will help us discover the path to true transformative change.
Celebrating the achievements of the first ever cohort for Le Va’s Addiction and Problem Gambling Harm Scholarship was a highlight for our Mental Health and Addiction team in November.
2024 was the first year of Le Va administering the new scholarship, which is funded by Te Whatu Ora with the intention of growing the capacity and capability of the workforce.
Students from all backgrounds were part of that inaugural cohort, all dedicated to working and studying with the goal of reducing harms to our communities from alcohol and other drugs, and from problem gambling.
Gratitude in abundance
Many of the scholarship recipients expressed their gratitude to Le Va and Te Whatu Ora for providing the scholarship opportunity, with several sharing that they would not have studied in 2024 without it.
Toleafoa Mark Esekielu, Le Va’s senior manager – mental health and addiction, said of the celebration and workshop, “It was heartwarming and humbling to hear the life stories and motivations of our 2024 Addiction and Problem Gambling Harm Scholarship recipients.
“Their drive to serve our communities from Invercargill to the Far North was apparent throughout the day and even more so in their final remarks. The humility each recipient showed and their gratitude for receiving support speaks volumes about them as people.
“When we hear the sentiments of our recipients feeling connected in the sector, feeling less isolated as addiction and problem gambling workers, and feeling motivated to carry on their study and mahi, it makes it all our efforts worthwhile.”
Many thanks go to Helen Schmidt-Sopoaga – Clinical Team Leader for CADS South Auckland and DRUA co-chair, Maikali Kilioni – Industry Engagement Lead (Pacific) at Toitū Te Waiora, and Ivan Yeo – Deputy Director and Lived Experience Lead at Asian Family Services, for sharing their experience and expertise in a career panel during the workshop.
Applications opening soon
The next round of applications for this scholarship, and for Le Va’s Futures that Work Pacific Mental Health and Addiction Scholarship, will open soon on Monday 2 December.
Both scholarships offer much more than just financial support, with mentoring, pastoral care, career advice and the chance to connect with peers in the sector available to all our successful students.
We encourage everyone planning to study in the areas of mental health, addiction or problem gambling in 2025 to check out our scholarships and eligibility criteria and send in an application. Our communities need you!
Explore Le Va’s scholarship opportunities.
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