At 60, Naumi Tapi embodies tenacity. Once homeless, she transformed her life by becoming the central figure of Taro’ITE, a project for social and professional reintegration through community taro farming in Papetoai, on the island of Mo’orea. Her journey, marked by twenty years of hardship, now inspires dozens of young people in difficulty.
Papetoai: the other side of the postcard
Far from the turquoise lagoons, Papetoai is caught in a land and environmental crisis that's putting its residents' future at risk. Real estate developers, often from off the island, pressure landowners into selling their farmland, pitching tourism projects that eat into the land left for growing food. In 2020, Papetoai still grew 40% of the taro it needed; by 2023, that had dropped to 15%. "These days, we live off canned food shipped in from Asia," Naumi laments. A 2025 survey carried out with the Kiwa Initiative laid bare the scale of these problems: widespread school dropout, youth unemployment, and addiction to hard drugs like ICE. "We went door to door and just listened to families talking about the children they'd lost, their polluted lagoon, their land disputes," she recalls. "That's when we understood we had to act."
Since 2020, the Tahitian Historical Society association has run agricultural projects on the Kellum estate, combining the transmission of traditional knowledge with food self-sufficiency. “A man who cannot grow taro cannot feed his family,” Naumi explains.
Taro'ITE: giving young people a future
It's a mantra she repeats to the young people, day in and day out. The result: more than fifty of them trained in two years, two hectares of taro fields replanted, and lives turned around. But the taro fields do more than hold the community together; they play a decisive ecological role too. "The Kiwa Initiative's support has been a gamechanger," Naumi stresses. "Thanks to them, we came to understand that taro fields act as a natural barrier against pollution." A recent study backs up, showing they cut the sediment and pollutants reaching the lagoons by 40%. "Let's protect what feeds us: the ocean, the land, the fish, Taro… it's all connected. We need to do more, both socially and environmentally. Otherwise, we'll just keep depending on imports, polluting our lagoons, and losing our youth," she insists. Her dream? To bring Taro'ITE to other districts of Mo'orea; and eventually, across all of French Polynesia.
