NZ high school delivers sports facilities in Fiji
A recent high school service trip to Fijian village Wailoku has capped off a five year relationship between the village and Auckland's Diocesan School for Girls.
Transcript
A recent high school service trip to Fijian village Wailoku has capped off a five year relationship between the village and Auckland's Diocesan School for Girls.
The group of 22 students traveled to Fiji in June to complete community sports facilities for the village, including a rugby field, a basketball court, a shelter and a water tank.
On previous visits to Wailoku, the school built playgrounds for both the kindergarten, and the primary school.
The school's chaplain, Reverend Sarah Moss explains to Esther Zweifel the approach they take towards helping the community.
SARAH MOSS: The whole philosophy behind it is that we go to do with, not to do for and as a consequence of that the community comes and works with the girls each day so we will have men who might not be working at the time through high unemployment in this area but a lot of the men have had experience on building sites and things like that so they come and work alongside our girls each day. And it's very much a mutual relationship where they need us and our resources, as much as we need them and their skill sets. So it's a fantastic relationship that's developed over that five year period. The project manager that is part of it, is Rebecca Abbott, so she is a teacher on staff at school and so Becki's role is to design the whole project and supervise the schedule of that happening and so she has taught some of the men up in the village interesting things like how to put in string lines and things like that. It's been really interesting for our girls in terms of that role modelling, they really can see that girls can do anything and it's also been interesting to see the role modelling in that community of the women taking ownership for things in the community as well.
ESTHER ZWEIFEL: Why did you identify Wailoku as the village where you wanted to work?
SM: The people of Wailoku are descendants of the Melanesians who came to Fiji on the indentured labour schemes and so their history in Fiji has been a difficult one, in terms of employment and their status in Fiji society. So they couldn't own land and the church leased land for these villagers and there's been an ongoing relationship between the Anglican church and the people of Wailoku to support them. It's exactly what I had in mind terms of our development of service because I really wanted to give the girls an authentic experience of moving into another context and working with other people. Service trips can be very popular, or people doing some sort of voluntary service overseas and if we're not careful it can slip into the territory of what I'd call service tourism and so for me it's really important that it's about relationship and consultation and a respectful ongoing dialogue but them also taking ownership for what is happening so it's not just a handout from people that they won't see again. So this area that was completely unusable right beside the school, has now become a place where the community can gather.
The school is now looking into starting a new project, in consultation with the Polynesian Archbishop Winston Halapua.
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