Toku Reo Foundation

The TOKU REO Foundation (meaning ‘My Voice’) is a non-profit organization founded by Reihana Koteka-Wiki, Miss Cook Islands 2018-2019. Her initiative aims to attack the stigma surrounding Mental Health by encouraging dialogue about these issues and creating awareness around the importance of understanding mental health.

Toku Reo, My Voice, made a befitting title for this initiative as it highlights the importance of dialogue in combatting the stigma and discomfort often attributed to topics of Mental Health. Reihana wishes to encourage more conversation, and thus providing a platform for which people’s voices are always heard.

Toku Reo aims to provide 'Self-Care' seminars, targeting families and youth, highlighting the importance of understanding mental illness and providing information, as well as coping tools to better handle life stressors. It is inevitable that we face stressors at any given point in our life-times (i.e; career changes, relationship changes, hormonal fluctuations, loss etc.), therefore practicing self-care, taking that time to do the things that help maintain a healthy mental state are incredibly important. WHO statistics find that 1-in-4 people will experience poor mental health during their lifetime, and half of mental disorders develop by age 14, most of which go undetected. Therefore, youth are an important target group. Toku Reo aims to provide Self-Care Journals for young adults, reminding us that we always need to take the time to promote our own mental well-being by setting time aside for self-care.

Toku Reo further aims to provide an online resource for which everyone can access (www.facebook.com/tokureo). Here, individual's stories will be shared as a Mental Health web series, whereby they can express their truths, their coping mechanisms and their stories. In an attempt to generate more discussions about the various aspects of Mental health (i.e. depression, anxiety, developmental illness, suicide, eating disorders, alcohol and drug abuse etc.) from a various viewpoints, it will aid in breaking the discomfort around talking about mental illness.