When Teu le Vā leads VfI1
When diverse traditions and knowledge are brought together with care, they can transform what practice looks like. For a Pacific Value for Investment Model, one of those moments was when the evaluation team took the familiar, eight‑step VfI process, contextualised each step through a distinctly Pacific lens, added extra stages at the beginning and the end, and re-imagined the entire sequence as a circle that begins and ends with relationships. Similarly, VfI’s four guiding principles were adapted and extended. The result is more than just “VfI for Pacific programmes”; it’s a Pacific‑led re‑expression of what good resource use can mean when it is grounded in Pacific values, worldviews and methodologies.
The evaluation design work was led by Dr Lana Perese and colleagues at TIRIA Ltd (formerly Malatest International). It was deeply collaborative from the outset. Colleagues from Auckland Council’s Economic Development Office Pacific team and Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) Langa le Vā team commissioned and co-developed the framework, and an advisory group of senior cultural and technical leaders walked alongside through successive iterations of the model. Preston Davies from Sapere contributed advisory support on economics, and I supported the project with VfI advice.
Why a Pacific VfI Model?
The starting point was a practical commissioning problem. Auckland Council’s Economic Development team, with support from MBIE, wanted a framework that would ground economic evaluation in Pacific values and connect resources to value creation for Pacific peoples in Aotearoa New Zealand: skills, employment, wider social and cultural wellbeing. VfI was attractive because it already combines evaluative reasoning and economic analysis to answer value‑for‑money questions in nuanced ways, but it needed adaptation to fully capture socio‑cultural, relational and intergenerational impacts that matter for Pacific communities and the prosperity of Aotearoa New Zealand.
The resulting Pacific Value for Investment Model (P‑VIM) was developed between August and December 2025 through an iterative process: a literature scan across Pacific and Western knowledge bases, a fono (workshop) to explore potential synergies and tensions between VfI and Pacific methodologies, and engagements with Pacific experts, providers, academics and senior public servants. The intention was to produce the first unified framework for this commissioning context that “grounds economic evaluation in Pacific values and connects resources to value creation in ways that matter for Pacific communities, agencies, and funders – beyond what economic evaluation approaches alone can capture.” Having such a framework is increasingly important given the growing demographic presence and economic contribution of Pacific communities in Aotearoa New Zealand.2
Guiding principles: VfI re‑spoken in a Pacific voice
In standard VfI work, four principles are emphasised: interdisciplinary thinking, mixed methods, evaluative reasoning, and a participatory approach. The team kept this backbone but re-spoke it in a Pacific voice and added principles that are non‑negotiable in Pacific‑led evaluation. The resulting set sits at the heart of the P-VIM: cultural scholarship and interdisciplinary thinking, cultural credibility and mixed methods, evaluative reasoning with reflective and responsive practice, participatory approach and meaningful relationships, professional practice, and data stewardship and digital ethics. I’ll unpack these principles below.
The framework is clear that these principles “are non‑negotiable and constitute the foundational core upon which the model is designed and implemented… a condition of engagement, application, and accountability within the P‑VIM framework.” Where VfI originally framed interdisciplinarity as integrating evaluation and economics, P‑VIM reframes it as prioritising Pacific scholarship as the lead discipline, with evaluation and economics in supporting roles. Where the general VfI approach emphasises mixed methods for validity and richness, P‑VIM anchors cultural credibility, Pacific‑led teams and data sovereignty as integral to what “mixed methods” means in practice.
This re‑expression of the principles is where the Pacific interpretation of VfI becomes visible. Each original VfI principle is both retained and transformed, as follows.
Interdisciplinary → Cultural scholarship and interdisciplinary thinking
The VfI approach integrates evaluation and economics to assess “the merit, worth and significance of resource use” in a way that is broader than pure economic evaluation or traditional programme evaluation. P‑VIM retains this integration, but combines three disciplines, “prioritising Pacific scholarship as the lead discipline governing the use of evaluation and economics.”
Pacific research paradigms such as fa’afaletui, talanoa and kakala, grounded in relational ethics and Pacific worldviews, are positioned as the primary intellectual home of the work.3 Theory and practice from evaluation and economics are intentionally woven in to fit with Pacific paradigms. This is an epistemological pluralism in practice: strong knowledge comes from the “convergence of diverse viewpoints and methodological rigour”, and in this framework, Pacific ways of knowing and being set the terms of that convergence.
Mixed methods → Cultural credibility and mixed methods
VfI encourages mixed methods, recognising the validity of combining quantitative and qualitative evidence to understand how and why value is created, and to support transparent evaluative judgements. In P‑VIM, this becomes a broader principle of cultural credibility and mixed methods.
The framework document notes that in a Pacific context, credible evidence includes “collective and individual perspectives, objective measures and subjective experiences, and culturally grounded ways of knowing and being.” What counts as credible extends beyond Western standards of validity and reliability to incorporate cultural protocols, relationships, and the relevance of evidence to Pacific lives and contexts. Methodologically, this translates into Pacific‑led design and analysis, integrating quantitative and talanoa‑based qualitative work, and an explicit commitment to Pacific data sovereignty and ethics. It includes careful attention to Pacific data in administrative sources such as NZ’s Integrated Data Infrastructure, a large, de-identified database linking administrative data about people and households from across government for research purposes.
Evaluative reasoning → Evaluative reasoning plus reflective and responsive practice
In general guidance, VfI emphasises explicit evaluative reasoning: clear criteria and standards, transparent synthesis of evidence, and collective deliberation to reach well‑reasoned judgements about resource use and value creation. P‑VIM keeps this and extends it by pairing it with reflective and responsive practice.
Reflective and responsive practice invites evaluators and agencies to pause on their conclusions and ask hard questions: Are processes extractive or misaligned with community aspirations? Have all reasonable efforts been made to support optimal development, delivery and achievement for both providers and participants? This principle legitimises recalibration – including the possibility of restarting programme or evaluation efforts – as a mark of integrity rather than failure. In the circular P‑VIM process, evaluative reasoning and reflective responsiveness recur across waves, rather than being a single “synthesis” moment at the end. This principle elevates evaluative thinking through a distinctively Pacific lens.
Participatory → Participatory approach and meaningful relationships
VfI stresses that the values guiding evaluation should be co‑constructed with a relevant and diverse group of stakeholders and expressed through shared criteria and standards (often as rubrics). VfI evaluation involves stakeholders in design and sense-making for ethical, credible, valid, useful evaluation. P‑VIM’s principle explains that “for programmes in Pacific communities, participatory approaches ensure the evaluation process aligns with community values, fosters deeper relationships, and generates findings that resonate and endure within the cultural contexts.”
This is framed through the concept of teu le vā – nurturing respectful and reciprocal relationships – which must be upheld throughout the initiative, not just during data collection or sense‑making workshops. The emphasis shifts to attending to the depth and quality of engagement, addressing power dynamics, and ensuring Pacific communities are centrally involved in design, analysis and dissemination.
8 steps in a row → 12 steps in a circle
Readers of my VfI work will be familiar with the eight‑step process: understand the investment and its value proposition, develop criteria and standards, identify and gather evidence, analyse and synthesise findings, and answer the evaluation questions. The team’s process work on P‑VIM began by asking what was missing if this was to be truly Pacific‑led. The answer resulted in the addition of extra steps at the beginning and end, and a different geometry.
P‑VIM is organised into four waves: Wave 1 – Prepare (Teu le vā), Wave 2 – Design VfI, Wave 3 – Implement VfI evaluation, and Wave 4 – Inform (Tausi le vā). Each wave includes several components, bringing the total to 12. This process retains VfI’s 8 steps in the middle and expands it with Wave 1 “pre‑VfI” components at the start. These early components lay a strong foundation by clearly defining the purpose and scope of both the initiative and evaluation, recognising the partnership and two-way relationships between funders and evaluators through clear and shared roles, responsibilities and communication pathways; securing resources; and including diverse Pacific perspectives in the creating of the theory of change and evaluation logic.
At the other end, the Wave 4 “post‑VfI” components close the circle by turning findings into action through clear reporting and culturally respectful dissemination. This goes beyond reporting; it is about relational accountability, empowering communities, informing policy and practice, and strengthening relationships to drive meaningful, transformative change. Re-imagining the process as a circle makes this explicit: evaluation begins and ends with the state of the vā (relational space that binds people, communities and institutions), and the next cycle of investment and evaluation grows out of how well that vā is nurtured and maintained (teu le vā).
Circles within oceans: P‑VIM and the Collective P‑VIM
Beyond individual initiatives, the team recognised that Pacific programmes rarely operate in isolation. They sit within ecosystems of disconnected activities, all intended to contribute to shared outcomes. So the framework extends P-VIM by zooming out and providing principles for a Collective Pacific Value‑for‑Investment Model (CP‑VIM). This extends P‑VIM to a system level, aligning with collective impact thinking while staying grounded in Pacific values.
The CP‑VIM uses the metaphor of the moana nui, inspired by Epeli Hau’ofa’s vision of the Pacific as a sea of islands connected by ocean rather than divided by it. In the illustration, “the sand forms the foundation, representing Pacific values… the ocean currents flowing from each initiative symbolise the activities and outputs… the moana nui symbolises how collective outcomes and measurable steps toward change emerge from the combined contribution of all currents… the navigational star lines represent guiding principles and robust standards… [and] the surrounding environment symbolises evaluative criteria used to determine value, while the capitals represent sustainable and transformative societal impacts.” VfI’s emphasis on contextualised criteria and standards is still there, but embedded in the wider relational and systemic picture.
Connecting to other contextual adaptations
The P‑VIM is one instance of a pattern that has been emerging in VfI work for some time: the general VfI approach is intended to be adapted to different contexts, while remaining true to its core guiding principles. Te Kounga o te Werawera, for example, is a kaupapa Māori-led VfI approach that uses Māori values and concepts to guide criteria, standards and questions about value, with VfI tools supporting rather than leading. In my Made‑in‑Africa VfI workshops and presentations, African indigenous contexts and aspirations define what counts as value, while VfI offers a process to articulate value propositions, connect investments to outcomes, and support decision‑making across value chains.
Across these examples, the through‑line is that VfI is not intended to be a rigid formula; it’s a set of guiding principles and a process that help to make resource use and value creation questions explicit and answerable, which can be re‑spoken in different epistemologies and visual languages. P‑VIM is a powerful interpretation of those principles by Pacific scholars and practitioners who lead with their own concepts of value, relationships and accountability.
One Pacific articulation among many
The P-VIM is not offered as a definitive or exhaustive “Pacific” model. It sits alongside many other Pacific research and practice frameworks, each grounded in its own cultural traditions, and it was developed through iterative, collective processes with Pacific advisors, providers, community leaders and officials, including both regional and ethnic perspectives, rather than by any one author or organisation.
Nor does the P-VIM pretend to speak for all Pacific peoples, nor to bridge all differences contained within the broad and often homogenising “Pacific” label. It draws on fa’afaletui‑informed processes that deliberately weave together multiple houses of knowledge – pan‑Pacific, ethnic‑specific, mixed ethnicity, cultural identity and orientation, community and government perspectives, Island‑born and New Zealand‑born experiences, and voices across generations, status and standing in families and communities – with a clear acknowledgement of diverse identities, contexts and worldviews.
What P-VIM teaches VfI practitioners
The Pacific-led process and principles in P-VIM extend and deepen ideas that are woven through VfI work. This makes the framework an important new resource for the VfI library. For example, in earlier posts and resources, you can find:
Interdisciplinarity treated as evaluation, economics and whatever other disciplines the context demands - for example, bringing psychology alongside evaluation and economics in mental health work.
Mixed methods presented as more than “quant plus qual”, inviting attention to how different ways of knowing and different kinds of subjective, objective, inter-subjective and inter-objective evidence work together.
Evaluative reasoning described as a relational as well as technical practice, grounded in collective deliberation and explicit values.
Participatory practice framed as power sharing and collaboration, not just consultation.
VfI located inside decision-making cycles as a guiding, iterative logic rather than a linear recipe.
The P-VIM brings these threads to the foreground and makes them unmistakably Pacific, with Pacific leadership, knowledge and methodologies setting the terms. That offers the wider VfI community new language, imagery and practice to learn from, while standing firmly on Pacific leadership and authorship. This makes it more than a niche case study - it showcases important principles for all of us.
Thanks for reading!
And gratitude to Lana Perese for peer review. I take sole responsibility for all opinions and any errors or omissions in this piece.
Reference
Perese, L., King, J., Stephen, J., Pio-Bentley, F., Davies, P., & McLeod, D. (2025). The Pacific Value-for-Investment Model. TIRIA Ltd, Julian King & Associates and Sapere, for Auckland Council.
Infographic
Vā is a Samoan vis-a-vis Pacific concept of relational space, understood not as an empty gap but as the living, often sacred “space between” people, communities, environments and spirituality that holds relationships together and gives them meaning; in policy and evaluation, engaging with vā means recognising that wellbeing, accountability and evidence are fundamentally relational, and that effective practice requires actively nurturing these spaces of connection in ways that prioritise reciprocity, respect, trust and collective benefit.
Pacific peoples in Aotearoa New Zealand are a dynamic, diverse and youthful population with genealogical links to Pacific Islands such as Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, the Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau and other places, whose cultural, social and economic contributions are central to the country’s future. Comprising 8.9% of the national population in 2023 (projected to reach 11.2% by 2043), Pacific communities are notably young (median age 24.9 years) and predominantly urban, and their growing share of the working-age population positions them as key drivers of future productivity and inclusive growth. Pacific identities are both specific (e.g., Samoan, Tongan) and collective (“Pacific peoples”), reflecting evolving forms of self-determined identity grounded in cultural roots, language, religion and shared experiences in NZ. Families and households tend to be larger and more interconnected than average, with higher rates of multi-family living and strong norms of social cohesion, reciprocity and care across generations and extended kin networks. Despite persistent inequities in income, employment, housing, education and health, Pacific peoples contribute an estimated $8 billion a year to NZ’s GDP, and earn around 6% of all income. Pacific families in NZ sustain substantial remittance flows that support Pacific economies across the region. Pacific-owned businesses and employers are growing rapidly, and the expanding role of Pacific peoples as entrepreneurs, workers in essential industries, community leaders, and cultural knowledge holders means that challenges to Pacific wellbeing are increasingly challenges to New Zealand’s overall wellbeing, economic prosperity and resilience. More detail in the report (Perese et al., 2025).
Fa’afaletui is a Samoan collective knowledge‑making methodology that brings together different houses of knowledge to collectively generate, share, and critically validate knowledge. Talanoa is a relational, participant‑led approach to dialogue that values open, agenda‑free conversation, emotional resonance and cultural authenticity; it centres Pacific oral traditions, reciprocity and decolonising, power‑sharing practice. The Kakala framework, grounded in Tongan garland‑making, treats research and evaluation as a sequence of culturally grounded phases – preparing with clear intent (Teu), gathering (Toli), weaving insights (Tui), gifting findings back (Luva), and reflecting on joy and warmth (Mālie, Māfana) – emphasising relational ethics, storytelling and giving back to communities.