Newcastle former NRL player Sione Finefeuiaki returns from Sione’s Foundation aid trip to help Tongan communities rebuild
SIONE Finefeuiaki used to talk about seeing his Tongan aid projects through to the end.
Five years on, the former NRL player has shifted his focus to continuity – making his foundation a solid constant in the lives of people from his homeland.
The more he does, the more opportunities to help he uncovers – having just returned from a trip where he and nearly 30 Newcastle volunteers made repairs to a disability centre and Kolonga Primary School, his next hurdle is bringing clean drinking water to 5000 people on the small island of ‘Eua.
“To be honest, being born and raised in Tonga – we struggle,” Mr Finefeuiaki said.
“Everyone is looking for opportunity somewhere and I was fortunate enough to move with my sister to New Zealand before I came over here through my sports career as a professional rugby league player.
“Sione’s Foundation aims to make a difference in a positive way for the Tongan community, where I’m from.”
Ash still covers parts of Tonga after an extremely powerful undersea volcano eruption triggered a tsunami in January – wiping out an entire village on Mango Island.
With family over in Tonga themselves, volunteers Serena Carney and Leya Wilson jumped at the chance to help on the latest aid mission earlier this month.
“I didn’t realise how emotional I would get, it’s different watching it here in Australia on the news, waiting to hear from our family to see if they’re okay,” Ms Carney said.
“You wouldn’t even know that they had been through it because they were just so calm and grateful and blessed that they’re still here.
“For me, I felt like I didn’t do enough, but for them we couldn’t have done any more.
“We went over there to help them and they were just giving and giving and giving, because that’s what we do as Tongans – we just give.”
And so they did, starting with the Alonga Disability Centre where they connected electricity, fixed access to water tanks, plumbed, fixed roofing, tiled bathrooms, installed shelving and gave it a fresh coat of paint.
Mrs Wilson took her husband and kids with her on the trip and said everyone came home wanting to do more.
“You leave there feeling equally destroyed by what you’ve seen and how they live, it’s gut-wrenching, but equally you’re uplifted by the experience and how grateful they are for the smallest of things,” she said.
“We are equally humbled by their humility.”
Over on neighbouring island, ‘Eua, the water treatment plant has been plagued with issues for the last two decades.
When it fails, locals are forced to drink untreated bore water – which comes with its own health risks.
The ‘Eua Water Quality Improvement Project aims to provide clean drinking water to the community with the financial support of the McCloy Family Foundation, expert knowledge of Beca HunterH20 and plumbing firm H.L. Mullane.
It’s not just about providing the infrastructure, but training locals to look after the system and make the change sustainable.
Mr Finefeuiaki said his goal is to do something consistent and meaningful.
“After five years I’m not going to go and put anything in there without a commitment from that village or its people to look after it,” he said.
“To be honest, to be able to help people and give them clean water – this island has suffered for decades, to give them clean water after all of this for the 5000 people living there, it means everything to me.
“I see the appreciation from their side of it, for me it’s a reality check because we live this fast-track life here and going back makes you grateful for what you have.”
The team is busy pulling all of the materials together to send to Tonga in the first week of December.
Without a semi-trailer on the island, it’s going to be an interesting task to negotiate – expected to take up to a week ferrying materials from the main island, Tongatapu.
Beca HunterH20 project manager Dean Taylor and process engineer Chris Conway have the challenge of coming up with creative solutions.
Anything that’s ferried to the island has to be customised to fit in a shipping container and simple enough for locals to maintain.
“If you forget something you can’t pop down to the hardware store and pick it up, so we’ve had to think about that and design everything to fit into shipping containers,” Mr Taylor said.
“We do a lot of work in the Pacific and we’ve realised you need to make a sustainable difference – lots of projects work for a few years and then fail because the locals aren’t trained or the technology is inappropriate for the environment.”
“I think we take it for granted in Australia, we don’t think about the impacts of poor water quality on people’s lives – for the people of ‘Eua this will be a huge, life-changing difference.”
Beca HunterH20 has been working with the Tonga Water Board to make the project a reality.
To help, visit sionesfoundation.com.au.
NEWCASTLE HERALD | 23rd October 2022
Madeline Link
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