Celebrating World Statistics Day 2020
October 20th, Tonga
The Tonga Statistics Department along with many Statistical Offices worldwide celebrated World Statistics Day.
2020’s World Statistics Day
The third World Statistics Day theme is “Connecting the world with data we can trust” which the Department celebrated with three days of events.
Competitions
Poem and Essay competitions for schools
Blessing
Sunday church celebration with the neighbouring church
Reports and Exhibition
2 big reports and booths
Something For Everyone!
Engaging the public
Students and through them, their parents are a much valued target audience for the Department so for this Statistics Day, competitions for students were held four days ahead of the day. Prep work required a school outreach program weeks ahead of the actual competition date, whereby officers from the Department talked to the students at their respective schools about the role and the work of the Statistics Department, along with the competition and citing the Department’s website as a useful resource to research for the competition.
Blessing the day together with neighbours
In Tonga, nothing is complete or right if there is an absence of prayer. For the Sunday before World Statistics Day, the Department requested of their next door neighbour, the Seventh-Day Adventist Church: Mangaia an opportunity to worship together with them. It was readily accepted and the day saw both the Department and the congregation of the church intermixing religious and statistical views harmoniously.
SDGs-related Reports with an Exhibition of Department’s work
For the actual Statistics Day, the Department presented and launched two very important SDGs-related reports: SDG progress report and Tonga MICS 2019 Survey Findings Report.
Those present included the Speaker for the Legislative Assembly of Tonga, Lord Fakafanua (as the guest of honour) and vital members of the National Statistical System along with the competition winners to again present their work.
The second half of the program for the day was an exhibition of the work that the Department does. Statistics Department is composed of 5 Programmatic Areas so each Program engaged in a friendly booth rivalry to see which booth can creatively present their work and attract the most interest. Mannequins that greeted visitors in 4 different languages, a variation of a Peepshow box, interactive quizzes on display screens, Department-branded prizes for games are just some of the creations at the booths which drew the guests from the reports launch, high school students and general public.
Resources from the Day
Speeches
Technical R Training for LNOB Analysis in Tonga.
In collaboration with the Tonga Statistics Department (TSD) and the United Nations Resident Coordinator Office (RCO), Tonga hosted its first face-to-face Technical R-Training on Leave No One Behind (LNOB) from March 8-9, 2023. The training, led by Mr. Selahattin...
Successful Completion of Population Estimates and Projections Workshop.
Successful Completion of Population Estimates and Projections Workshop Last week has been an intense, yet a very fulfilling week of learning and partnerships within Tonga’s National Statistical System (TNSS), as well as the Pacific’s, through a workshop that was led...
Producing Official Population Estimates and Projections for Tonga Workshop.
On Monday, 13 February 2023, a workshop on Population Estimates and Projections was launched by the New Zealand High Commissioner to Tonga, H.E. Matthew Howell. This workshop is led by Dr. Ofa Afuha'amango Ketu'u and the team from StatsNZ, in co-facilitation with the...