When you’ve spent years building a career - training, qualifying, perfecting your skills - it can be confronting to discover that none of it counts in your new country.

For Peace Abaroh, a qualified dental technician from eastern Nigeria, that realisation came after arriving in Alexandra last September to join his wife, Francisca. 

Francisca had made the move five months earlier, taking up a role at Ranui rest home through New Zealand’s skilled worker residency pathway.

For Peace, education was something always valued in his family.

“I am the youngest of six siblings – my mother is a retired headmistress and my father is a retired inspector of education,” he said.

But Peace chose his own path early on, drawn to health sciences by a desire for a career aimed at “saving lives”.

He settled on dentistry, spending four years studying towards a Higher National Diploma in Dental Technology.

Following graduation and a one-year internship, Peace undertook his mandatory national youth service as a dental technician.

But in New Zealand, his professional qualifications didn’t translate easily.

The licensing process for dental technicians proved complex and expensive, leaving him uncertain about what to do next - and questioning whether the move to New Zealand had been the right one.

While the welcome from the community has felt good - “I love it here…people are willing to help and extend friendship” - Peace acknowledges having professional direction and fulfillment will help him

feel truly settled.

As a student in Nigeria, Peace gained experience helping in a family pharmaceutical business.

He has an entrepreneurial streak, which he attributes to that stint working with family, as well as to his heritage - the Igbo have a reputation as an enterprising people.

In 2019, back home in Nigeria, he put his growing business acumen to the test, opening his own small pharmaceutical shop while continuing work as a dental technician.

Now, in Alexandra, he finds himself at a crossroads: should he retrain as a dental technician under New Zealand's system, or explore a new direction in business?

The way forward arrived in the form of a business mentorship, through a partnership between Welcoming Communities, Business Mentors New Zealand and Business South.

The mentoring is helping Peace reimagine his future - perhaps retraining, or drawing on his background in health and his entrepreneurial streak to build something new.

“I am grateful and most appreciative for the business mentorship – it makes me feel at home away from home,” Peace said. 

“I feel welcomed and a part of this community.”

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