MAINTAINING GAIA

I mentioned in a recent post that a WWF rugby 7s tournament has been raising money for a local community group called the Qoliqoli Cakovata Management Committee (QCMC) who aim to better manage their province’s marine environment.

Together with providing help with money for boats, and alike, the WWF has also recently been working with them to help devise a more structured approach to their activities – starting with a work plan a few months ago.

Last week five of us from the WWF office took the 30 minute flight across to Vanua Levu to host a communications workshop at the Macuata Provincial Compound with the aim to help the QCMC better achieve their objectives.

The event was conducted entirely in Fijian so my speech was translated back at the office and presented by a colleague – all I did was hang out with children and take a load of photographs, ow… and eat too much crab, fish, fruit, cassava and anything else I could get my hands on (Fijian cooking is sensational).

From what I could gather, it all went down pretty well. Communications is quite a simple concept and, in Fiji, it is very easy to execute so I’m not sure how much of what we told them they already knew but when a journalist from the Fiji Times came to give them a presentation and take their picture everyone seemed pretty happy.

This has been my first time on Fiji’s second largest island, Vanua Levu and I’m absolutely LOVING it! It is vastly different from the parts of the main island I have been too, much less developed and much more genuine – it’s what I dreamt Fiji to be like before I came.

The village we hosted the workshop at was about an hours drive deep into the jungle perched in the banks of a river and it was spectacular! I had to wonder to myself, while watching all the kids jumping in the river and running in and out of the jungle, how amazing it must be part of a community like this. Best playground ever!