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.