A Samoan residing in Texas, U.S. is offering US$250 (T$690) in prize money to mothers who enter an online gaming competition as part of their Mother's Day celebration and secure first, second or third solo rooms.

Janet N Tulafono-Kafoa, who has roots in the village of Falelatai and owns a gaming outlet called the No Fefe Gaming, told Samoa Observer that the competition on PUBG (PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds) is being held to mark this year’s Mother’s Day celebrations.

"Our Mother's Day promotion is for all those mothers who are playing PUBG so this is our way of appreciating them. The competition is for all the mothers who play PUBG and they have to play the game in order to win the prize," she said.

"The prizes that we have for the first solo rooms is $100 USD, and the second and third solo rooms are $75 USD. But we need 100 mothers to sign up for the first event, and if there are 100 mothers then they will continue on to the next round.”

Meleseini Manu, who is a Samoan and is described as the “gaming sister” of Ms Tulafono-Kafoa, came up with the Mother’s Day promotion idea.

Ms Tulafono-Kafoa said the PUBG is more than a game and is used as an online tool to strengthen the Polynesian community.

"One of the uso who is responsible for the Poly Gaming Page gave me the idea for this promotion. Some may look at PUBG Mobile or any of the video games as ‘just a game’ but to me and my No Fefe clan it's more than just a game. We try to strengthen our Poly Community on PUBG Mobile," she added.

In a phone interview, Mrs Manu said she has been a gamer for over a decade and liks to meet new people, especially Polynesians.

"The gamer I used to run with was a mixture of different Polynesian communities. We all used to have gatherings and everything. As years went by I noticed that more Poly gamers started joining and things started changing. These led to some young ones challenging the older ones, and it became toxic to the point that it was Samoans versus Tongans," she said.

"And as someone who has roots in both Samoa and Tonga I had to change this vibe and so I started a page to bring our Polynesian gamers together. We create different events to help bring them together and this Mother's Day promo is one of them.”

Despite the challenges, Mrs Manu is of the view that the platform can be used to help strengthen the Polynesian movement, and encourage everyone to just have fun.

"This is important for me because as a Tongan-Samoan girl, I've always felt the hatred between my people. I'm glad I was able to create this page, and use this as a way to bring all Polynesian communities together," she added.

A number of mothers with Samoan heritage have signed up for the gaming competition, which will go online on May 2, 2020. 

Mrs Manu is sponsoring the prize money but a lot of gamers have also chipped in and donated prize money. 

"I can't give you numbers of Samoans who have joined but there are so many of them. We have a huge Samoan community in the gaming world. The past tournaments that we hosted, we had a lot of Polys majority were Samoans playing from Japan, Germany, New Zealand, Samoa and Australia," she said.

"I use my own funds to cater for the events but this is the first time a gamer wants to donate money for the Mother's Day promo. I don't have any particular business partners, we are just a group of gamers.”