Rob Luisi

2024 Cohort

Pronouns: he/him

Rob’s hope is to encourage people to feel more comfortable in their skin, and enable agency for a self directed path.

Rob often seeks opportunities to combine his passion and efforts, aiming to find ways to enhance projects by aligning them with his existing work or interests. These often include young people, communities, creativity and innovation in the context of Moana Cultures' perspective.

Rob leads a team of dynamic youth workers at a small community youth trust in West Auckland called Ranui 135. He and his wife, along with some friends and incredible young people, established the trust. It was created in 2002 to address the difficulties that their community and young people were experiencing at that time. Every day since has been a reel of laughs, hustle, tears and countless celebrations of achievements by young people that have defied preconceived negative outlooks of our community.

Recently, Rob has been working on creative projects that tell the story of the Niue Diaspora experience in Aotearoa. He does this through writing, teaching, performing and creating audio-visual projects. His goal is to preserve and share knowledge, and to give people an understanding of the challenges faced by the Niue community and their identity.

Rob is also interested in and passionate about economic mana motuhake. Through Ranui 135, he is trying to increase youth interest and action, creativity and entrepreneurship, in the pursuit of self-determination.

“My goal is to stimulate discourse, enquiry and survival through storytelling, as Tagata Niue navigate the future of an endangered cultural identity.”

Social change work

One of Rob's favorite personal projects is a video project that explores the Niue narrative, especially during a critical time in preserving language and cultural identity.