2023 Graduate Profile: Micah Sili, Bachelor of Nursing
When Micah Sili first came to MIT she had no aspirations to get into politics, only wanting to earn a Nursing degree to help serve the community and look after older people like her grandparents who she was raised by in Tonga.
However, during the Pandemic the 30-year-old was thrust into the national spotlight becoming not only a spokesperson for our learners but an advocate for south Auckland as well.
“The leadership role came naturally to me as COVID arose,” Micah explains. “I found there was a gap for students, as well as the community I was part of. I felt I had the strength and the voice it took to actually make sure our needs were being heard and met.”
In February 2021, Ms Sili was MIT Student Council President when a learner came to Manukau campus while infectious with the virus. The incident led to a lockdown of the city with intense media and online focus coming on the institute, learners and the area as a whole.
This meant giving live interviews on national television, featuring prominently in newspaper stories and on radio guiding audiences away from stigmatizing people to concentrate more on how health disparities were leading to transmission and more severe cases.
“I hope that my voice managed to open doors for a lot of other people to come forward to highlight issues that have been pushed to the side with the south Auckland community,” she says.
“COVID brought up the inequities a lot our students and our Māori and Pacific communities were experiencing in terms of accessing health, financial stability and food security. Student politics gave me a microphone to be able to amplify what everybody wanted the media and the government to focus on.”
In July of the same year, it was great to see Micah back in the media talking about events turning ‘full circle’ as MIT acted as community partner for the country’s first mass COVID-19 vaccination event.
More than 15,000 Aucklanders receiving their first doses of the vaccine at the Due Drop Events Centre in Manukau over that weekend.
Currently, Ms Sili is working at the Pasifika Family Health Group which has been providing community-based care in Tāmaki Makaurau – Auckland for more than 30 years.
“Working in the community, I am able to follow up with families. We create more of that family environment, that for Māori and Pasifika they are more responsive to and what makes it easier to come into the clinic, access healthcare, access financial support and access the referrals they need for specialist care which often times get missed.”
MIT would like to take this opportunity to not only congratulate Micah Sili for successfully graduating with her degree, but also the amazing contribution she made to the institute during a difficult time and how she inspired those around her to lead through service. Malo ‘Aupito!