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What is VSAConnect?
VSAConnect is VSA's Alumni Association for its returned volunteers and their accompanying partners. It aims to be an active and vibrant alumni community where you as a member can contribute towards building a groundswell of support for VSA across New Zealand.
VSAConnect members will be connected through a bimonthly enewsletter (this is the first!) and an online platform. Other activities will include speaking opportunities for returning volunteers, local get-togethers, connecting with fellow volunteers and sharing development knowledge.
The VSAConnect online platform with log-in and password access directly accessible from VSA’s website is now being developed and tested. It is intended to be the foremost forum for returned volunteers to stay in touch with VSA, reconnect with returned volunteers and find out what they have been doing since returning to New Zealand, obtain their up to date development news and information, discuss topics of interest through online forums, share photos and stories, find out about upcoming events, and participate in development-focused advocacy campaigns and online polls.
Please help us test our online platform
We have decided that the online platform needs further testing before all VSAConnect members are invited to enrol on it. We need up to 100 online testers who are willing to trial and suggest improvements to the platform. This is a chance to share your knowledge, and help influence its future capabilities!! Please email us now on vsaconnect@vsa.org.nz if you can help us with this.
About this enewsletter
This first edition is designed to be viewed either in email or in your browser (if photos are not showing, click the "View this email in your browser" link at the top right-hand corner). It can also be printed straight from email or from your browser. Future editions will probably be bimonthly and shorter, with links to items on the online platform.
Please send us your feedback on any item in this edition, or send us new material for the next issue.
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Returning to Vanuatu
Miriam Wood (2007 UniVol) returns to Wan Smolbag
I often wondered after coming home from my assignment what happened to the friends I had made – were they still employed? Did they get married? Did they complete their training? My gut feeling was that I remembered a lot more about my VSA experience than they would have remembered about me (did they remember me??!).
Five years after leaving, I was wondering whether my assignment had made any difference to my partner organisation.
So it was with much excitement that I decided to visit Vanuatu late last year. Just to check it was still there! I know not many people either get the chance to visit their place of assignment or want to after they leave but it was a great thing for me to do.
Five years on and the Wan Smolbag (WSB) Youth Centre has just flourished. It was a real highlight seeing the library we had started bigger and better than when I’d left. The music room has been transformed into a recording studio with a full mixing desk and 10 bands. The youth field has been upgraded and new classes like pottery have started up. Both the girls and guys national hockey teams are involved in overseas tournaments - of which WSB was the birth place of Vanuatu hockey. It was humbling to go back and know that I was just one volunteer in a long line of people who have invested so much into this one place but also really satisfying to see a grassroots organisation take off and become so well established.
I was able to meet up with my old friends and while our lives are so different it was a real privilege to share a little bit more of life with them. I left Vanuatu with a renewed love for the place, and also a sense of closure to my whole assignment experience. I knew the most lasting work I had done, was the quality of my relationships with my new friends.
He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata! He tangata! He tangata! (What's the most important thing in the world? It is people, people, people.)
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Send us your story about going back to where you volunteered (preferably with photos).
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Helen Clark on the global development agenda
Former New Zealand Prime Minister and now Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme says that the debate about what happens to the global development agenda after 2015 is in danger of “going to sleep†unless the world makes a real effort to keep the momentum going. Speaking at a VSA function to mark the Live Below the Line fundraising campaign, Ms Clark said that there had been a ferment of activity and public consultation about what would happen after the deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is reached in 2015.
“Phase 1 has now run its course, and the High Level Panel appointed to look at this issue has produced its report,†she said. “There is now a danger it will end up in the dustbin – there has to be a way of keeping this very useful debate going.†However, with two years still to run there is a danger the momentum will be lost.
More than 150 people attended the VSA conversation, the subject of which was The Future We Want: The Millennium Development Goals and Beyond. They included 25 student leaders from nine Wellington secondary schools, along with former VSA volunteers and representatives from organisations such as MFAT, UNICEF and Family Planning International.
Before the event began the audience was given a 60-cent lunch to help promote Live Below the Line, an annual fundraising event in which participants live on $2.25 a day – the equivalent of the extreme poverty line – for five days. VSA is one of eight partners supporting Live Below the Line 2013, which ran from September 23 to 27. You can still sign up and take the challenge right up until November 1st.
View video clips from the event on the VSA website.
Visit the Live Below the Line website for more information.
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Big Mama's Yacht Club: a local institution in Tonga.
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Focus on Tonga
Quick facts
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The Kingdom of Tonga is unique in the South Pacific in being the only country never colonised by a foreign power. It is also the only surviving monarchy in the Pacific.
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There are 176 islands but only 36 of the islands are inhabited. Around two-thirds of Tonga's 106,000 people live on the main island of Tongatapu.
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Sunday is celebrated as a strict Sabbath, enshrined so in the constitution.
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Tonga’s geographical location also makes it very vulnerable to natural disasters, including frequent cyclone activity.
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The economy is sustained by agriculture, fishing and the money sent home by Tongans living abroad, many of them in New Zealand.
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Migrating humpback whales breed and calve in Tongan waters from June to November.
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There are some active volcanoes including Fonualei, Niuafo'ou, Late and Tofua.
Current assignments
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Alan Struckman is a Post-Harvest Specialist with Tonga Export Quality Management Ltd, finishing in February 2014.
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Alison Riley is on a UniVol assignment working as an Administration and Marketing Assistant at Langafanua Handicrafts, completing her assignment in December 2013.
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Dunstan Brook-Miller is on a UniVol assignment as a Statistics Assistant at the Ministry of Commerce, Tourism and Labour, finishing in December 2013.
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David Dally is a Human Resources Adviser for the National Reserve Bank of Tonga (NRBT), finishing in February 2014.
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Paige Marshall is on a UniVol assignment as a Social Media and Administration Assistant at the Women in Sustainable Enterprise, finishing in December 2013.
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Suzanne Dally is a Handicraft Training Adviser with Langafonua Handicrafts, finishing in February 2014.
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Wendy Roger is a Hospitality and Tourism Trainer for the Tongan Business Enterprise Centre, finishing in February 2014.
Go to the VSA website for more stories and pictures on VSA in Tonga, including one volunteer’s boot camp experience.
Tell us about your Tonga experience and what it means to you!
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Go and see
Mr Pip
Mr Pip, the movie shot on location in Bougainville which is based on the award winning novel by New Zealander Lloyd Jones, opens in theatres across the country on October 3rd. Mr Pip was filmed in the village of Pidia on Bougainville Island in Papua New Guinea, and in Auckland and Oamaru, between June and September 2011. In Bougainville, the beautiful white sand beaches, lush tropical rainforest, the exotic look of the village buildings and the blue seas and skies made an idyllic backdrop for the lyrical scenes of village life and the developing friendship of Matilda and Mr Watts. The beauty of this environment contrasts sharply with the jolting reality of the harsh wartime parts of the story that take place in the village. The Lloyd Jones novel was set in Bougainville during the 1990s when the island was torn apart by a war over copper mining and land rights, and most of the story it tells is very close to the experiences of the people there.
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Auckland's VSA branch is screening the film Mr Pip as a fundraiser on Sunday 6 October. Contact Tanya Wilkinson for location and ticket details.
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Beyond the Edge
The New Zealand Film Commission, VSA and the Himalayan Trust invite you to join the Governor General and the Prime Minister at the New Zealand premiere of Beyond the Edge, the film about Sir Edmund Hillary's journey to the summit of Everest. This is a gripping tale of adventure and daring that will have you on the edge of your seats.
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All sales support VSA/Himalayan Trust programme to send volunteer teachers to Himalayan schools following in Sir Ed's footsteps. Buy now as tickets are limited.
The ticket price of $30 includes a glass of wine. Buy your tickets now on Eventfinda.
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