The PCBL and MFAT Pacific Connections team enjoy the vibrancy of Pasifika Festival 2025.
By Michelle Curran
Strategic Communications, Pasifika TV
For Pacific Cooperation Broadcasting Limited (PCBL) Chief Executive Natasha Meleisea, being at Pasifika Festival is a striking reminder of who we are as a nation.
Natasha and the PCBL team joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) Pacific Connections team pavilion at Pasifika Festival 2025 in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, to celebrate diversity and culture in the largest Polynesian city in the world.
“Aotearoa New Zealand is a multicultural country, with many Pacific cultures – and statistics show those numbers are going to grow even more,” Natasha says.
“Being here is an opportunity to celebrate and strengthen our connections with our Pacific communities, not only in Aotearoa, but also in the region.”
Natasha says PCBL is funded by MFAT with aims to build stronger relationships in the Pacific region by supporting the media sector and has a strong partnership with the Pacific Connections team, led by Director Felicity Bollen.
“This collaboration helps strengthen ties between Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific region, and it enables us to support Pacific broadcasters across 15 Pacific countries.
“That support looks like the provision of equipment, training, connectivity and the ability to support our broadcasters and being able to tell their own stories using their own lens.”
Participation in this year’s Pasifika Festival has provided PCBL’s channel, Pasifika TV, to showcase different cultures and stories, along with the vibrant colour, food and music – everything that makes us uniquely Pacific, Natasha adds.
“It is absolutely important to be able to celebrate our Pacific cultures.
“New Zealand has the largest Pacific community in the world living here and the ties and connections between New Zealand and the different Pacific countries are absolutely embedded in the fabric of our culture here in Aotearoa.”
The highlight for the CEO, who has attended many Pasifika Festivals now in its 33rd year, is always the sights, sounds and taste of the Pacific.
“This year, it is also seeing the partnership between the different community groups present at Pasifika this year,” she says.
“It symbolises the connectedness and the collective values that are embedded in Pasifika, and that is very important because it’s something naturally inherent in our own cultures.
“We are Pasifika.”
Visit Pasifika TV for more information and follow MFAT Pacific Connections on Facebook.
