Suicide campaign raising awareness

‘‘It won't bring our loved ones back, but maybe ... it will save someone's loved one’’

A movement to stop the death of loved ones is going global thanks to one South Auckland resident.

Suicide awareness campaign Hope Walk is kicking off next month after launching for the first time in 2015.

It was started by Papakura pastor Joseph Fa’afiu as a way of ‘‘breaking the stigma, shame and silence around suicide’’.

He lost a close friend to suicide in 2010 and vowed to make a change.

‘‘I created it because we lost someone and we can’t bring her back, but we can sure try and save someone else,’’ he says.

Around 3000 people attended the first walk from Alfriston College to Central Park in Papakura and Fa’afiu says the movement has ‘‘touched a nerve’’.

A number of Hope Walks will take place on different dates around the world this year as the event has grown through word of mouth, he says.

This includes 19 cities in New Zealand as well as cities in Australia, Canada, USA and Rarotonga. ‘‘Our slogan is ‘stronger together’. ‘‘No single agency or group can fix this.

‘‘We have to work together and be encouraged by each other.

‘‘The Hope Walk movement will not change a thing by itself, but together we are stronger, together we can turn the tide.

‘‘It won’t bring our loved ones back, but maybe ... it will save someone’s loved one,’’ he says.

Fa’afiu also organised the Lights for Lives event last September which saw people take to 17 mountains around New Zealand.

The event was a message of hope for families who have experienced suicide by symbolically lighting the darkness with torches, head lamps and cell phones.

‘‘We don’t speak about it so it has become taboo. We want to bring it into the light so we can, as a community, work for better prevention solutions,’’ Fa’afiu says.

In the 2016 financial year, 579 Kiwis took their own lives - compared to 564 during the previous year.

Chief Coroner Judge Deborah Marshall says the rate of people dying by suicide remains consistent and shows New Zealand had a long way to go in turning this ‘‘unacceptably high’’ total around.

Hope Walk starts at Bruce Pulman Park at 10am, Saturday, March 4 and finishes at Central Park, Papakura.