the wellbeing of their families in the future.

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Live & Learn celebrates with residents of informal settlements. Seven

informal settlements and three evacuation centres recently received assistance through the Early Recovery & Rehabilitation for Safe Water Action project.

The Early Recovery & Rehabilitation for Safe Water Action project funded by UNICEF.

Early Recovery & Rehabilitation for Safe Water Action project, an initiative

funded by UNICEF in response to devastation wrought by Cyclone Mick in

December 2009. Communities in the Central division faced the full brunt of the cyclone. Live & Learn through UNICEF paid special attention to residents of informal settlements. Several Informal settlements in the Suva-Nausori and Navua Districts benefited from the provision of Rainwater Harvesting systems and vigorous Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) education.

This WASH education action aimed at strengthening the capacity of children, teachers, parents and residents of informal settlements to developing good water management, sanitation and hygiene practices. This approach was taken to ensure local communities were better prepared especially during times of natural disasters. Educating the target communities was facilitated with the hope that communities would be more able to independently safeguard their health and the wellbeing of their families in the future.

A resident of Jittu, a settlement in the outskirts of the main Suva city area had this to say about the WASH education training “the activities facilitated during the training session taught me to think about others because they too would need to drink. People have to think of others, love one another because

we are all neighbours. There will come a time when water will be little and we have to think about

others. People who cannot access water during emergency will be less fortunate and may affect their health and sanitation. Misusing water will lead to water shortages and as a result people will be hiring trucks to go and look for a water source to feed families.”

Live & Learn also acknowledges the assistance provided by the Ecumenical Centre for Research, Education and Advocacy (ECREA) in initial meetings with residents of the informal settlements.

INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

NZAID wraps up

World Water Day update 2 Women in Remote Areas in Fiji Grassroots Democracy 3

Live & Learn in Mali Environment Week 4

Live & Learn restructures.

RAP Curriculum

Development

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Live & Learn Environmental Education have recently completed the Strengthening Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Education in schools in Fiji project. Live & Learn embarked on a 9 month project funded by NZAID (New Zealand’s International Aid &

Development Agency).

The initial engagement was for Live & Learn to work with a total of 28sites. However, with the growing demand and need to cater for a larger population, the project saw the installation of rain water harvesting tanks at 34 sites. Of the 34 chosen sites 4 are schools in the Sigatoka area and 29 are schools in the Nadi area with an additional site being the Sabeto Christian Camp. The Sabeto Christian Camp is used as an evacuation centre for residents of the Sabeto area.

“This project being a short-term one, saw our team working tirelessly.We encountered a lot of challenges, but at the same time, it was very rewarding to see how the target.”

The World Water Day 2010 (WWD 2010) campaign was launched in Nadi this year. This year’s theme focused on “Communicating Challenges and Opportunities - Safe Water for a Healthy Pacific.” Our team of active WASH coordinators are advocating for access to safe drinking water, improved water management practices, improving hygiene and access to basic sanitation.

A series of professional development workshops with teachers was conducted in the Suva, Lautoka, Ra and Nausori Districts.

The professional development sessions with teachers opened the forum for sharing experiences, chal-lenges that local communities face with regard to accessing safe drinking water. The forum also pro-vided the platform for concrete discussion and support for actions to improve accessibility to safe drinking water.

Professional Development for teachers

Students of Nadele Public School use their newly installed water tank

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Young people hold a vast wealth of knowledge. Often this knowledge is not tapped on. In this sense, the whole wealth of knowledge slowly over time diminishes. Live & Learn’s recent engagement with young people through the Building Grassroots Democracy in Fiji project, funded by the European Union, have drawn a lot from young people in thirty communities around Fiji.

Young people have identified the need to revive local knowledge on conservational practices to better manage natural resources within local communities.

“Our young people are our hope in keeping these traditional practices, values and beliefs alive and sustaining our land and all its resources for future generations.”~ Village elder.

A Youth learning Circle during the training.

The youth group in Malake Village.

The men’s representative at the training in Sabeto.

Live & Learn embarks on an extensive European Commission funded project.

The Supporting Human Rights and Social Participation for Women in Remote areas of

Fiji is a three year project. This exciting initiative extends to all the provinces within Fiji. Tailevu : Nakalawaca, Veinuqa; Namosi : Veivatuloa, Nakavu; Serua : Vunibau; Cakaudrove : Naikawaga, Naibalebale;

Nadroga/Navosa : Korovou, Tubeirata; Bua : Nagadoa, Vuya; Lau : Maloku, Naroi;

Ba : Nailaga Settlement, Nailaga Village, Tavakubu Settlement; Macuata: Visoqo, Naduri, Seaqaqa; Lomaiviti : Nasaga; Kadavu : Kavala; Rewa : Narocake, Nukui; Naitasiri :

Naganivatu, Nakini, Navuso, Navatuvula; Ra : Malake, Naria Settlement,Naivuvuni Settlement, Naivuvuni Village, Vitawa

The action seeks to support human rights and social participation for women in remote and poor regions of Fiji. This extensive initiative directly targets an estimated total population of 4140 women and 13150 groups.

The overall objective is to build broad-based public demand for democracy and human rights by strengthening women’s groupings and organisations and give women a voice through

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Live & Learn is committed to fostering greater understanding towards a sustainable future through educa-tion, community mobilization and supportive partnership. Live & Learn through partnership with WWF is restoring the natural landscape on Mali Island though community landcare.

The project is primarily targeted at restoring the landscape of Mali Island to some degree where it retains a higher percentage of native flora and an improvement in its land quality and soil condition for long term sustainable agriculture.

On Mali Island the loss of native trees and persistent burning over the years has resulted in increasing erosion of top soil, lower productivity of crops and prevalent drier soil conditions. To exacerbate the situa-tion access to adequate water supply on the island is limited.

Live & Learn’s role in this project is particularly to improve the community’s long term access to freshwater resources and to strengthen community capacity to sustain initiated project activities independently and exploit livelihoods and income opportunities for the community at large that may arise out of the project.

‘Stop Pollution Save Our Plants and Animals’ was this year’s environmental week theme. The

four day awareness event took place from the 3rd to the 6th of June which was hosted by the Deptment of Environment and staged at Sukuna Park. The awareness primarily targeted the children and youths of the day to take the leading role in keeping Fiji’s environment clean.

Live & Learn took this opportunity to share with primary and secondry schools from as far as Navua and Tailevu on the importance of preventing the pollution of our water ways specifically ground water. Students were indroduced to Live & Learn’s ground water model which explained unseen processes of ground water movements and how they are easily polluted without the knowledge of the public. The H2S colour code test kit was also used along side the ground

water model to explain that the monitoring of the quality of our drinking water was equally important. The awareness team explained that even though our drinking water may look clean, we can never know its true quality and that is why Live and Learn together with World Health Organization are using the H2S water monitoring quality test kit to test for the presence of fecal

coliform in our drinking water. This was a timely

message for students as Fiji experienced multiple cases of typhoid within rural areas around the country.

Students were attentive and attracted to the presentations and illustrations of the ground water model and H2S test kits and the interactive approach to

which they related best to. The awareness team gave out information cards on water, water activity cards 2009, calenders , comics on water, posters, to which student and teacher took advantage of.

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T_{he Live & Learn Pacific regional management team has been established to strengthen and}

sup-port existing offices and programs in Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Fiji. As a regional organization, the integration of environmental, cultural and development concepts linking environmental knowledge to social change is key to our work.

The Pacific team which includes all regional staff have a wide range of expertise and skills that will contribute to a “Pacific Learning Network”. The Learning Network will encourage the sharing of ex-periences, knowledge, skills and lessons learnt across the four countries. These opportunities will help us achieve our aims to reduce poverty and promote greater understanding and action toward human and environmental sustainability through education and dialogue building.

Live & Learn welcomes the Pacific Regional Manager, Doris Susau.

“Visiting the regional offices has been a learning experience as Regional Manager. There is a lot of interesting and exciting work being done in each country. We have great potential in staff and with the efforts made toward improving our networks, we can only serve our pacific communities better, both now as well as in the future. I look forward to supporting all offices in strengthening our partnerships with stakeholders as well as forg-ing ahead in the various program areas of work.”

Doris Susau, former country manager for the Fiji Office is succeeded by Morena Rigamoto.

The training for the development of the Research of Aspirations and Perceptions (RAP) material was undertaken by :Vasiti Seruvatu, Simione Koto and William Young, staff of Live and Learn along with Pauline (consultant from Australia).

The purpose was to try and put together RAP training materials. The development of the RAP training materials will provide the audience

with a better understanding of what the RAP involves.

A very interesting session held at Live and Learn was put into play. The RAP curriculum development group went through a active dis-cussion and sharing of ideas to help formu-late the RAP curriculum material.

The RAP curriculum material would encom-pass 4 main areas :

Facilitation Skills,

RAP tools and Activities, Documentation and Analysis Summation on where to next

This material will first be trialed by staff at the various Live & Learn offices.

Sally Asker and Pauline Robinson at a morning tea at LLEE after the RAP training.

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Alex Wilson

Regional Offices Vanuatu

Live & Learn Environmental Education,

P.O. Box 1629, Port Vila, Vanuatu.

Phone: +678 27448, Fax: +678 25455

Solomon Islands

P.O. Box 1454, Honiara, Solomon Islands.

Phone: +677 23697 / 24453 Fax: +677 24454

Papua New Guinea

P.O. Box 844,Kimbe WNBP, Papua New Guinea. Phone: +675 98344237

Maldives

P.O. Box 3007, Male, Maldives. Phone: +960 773 3348 / 332 4861

Fax: +960 332 2286

Cambodia

G.P.O. Box 91, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Phone: +855 23 224053

Australia

Ross House, 4th floor, 247-251 Flinders Lane, Melbourne Vic 3000, Australia.

Phone: +613 96501291, Fax: +613 96501391

Fiji

Live & Learn Environmental Education Phone: +679 3315 868

Fax: +679 3305 868 Email: fiji@livelearn.org Website:www.livelearn.org

RiverCare website: www.rivercarefiji.org

87 Gordon Street, Private Mail Bag, Suva, Fiji.

Experiences so far in Live & Learn

Construction work, Carpentry work, educational training in communities and schools, research work, administrative work, devising educational tool kits,

schools broadcasting. What more could you ask for! I’ve learnt that in this

Experiences so far in Live & Learn

Its been an interesting ride for me these past few weeks, I've learnt and gained so much broadening my perspective working with schools and communities...and I hope to gain

Live & Learn welcomes new staff

William Young Bachelor of Arts Environment Studies Institution:USP Interests: Sports Special Area of Interest: Environmental conservation Bachelor of Arts Geography & Tourism Studies Institution: USP Interests: Culture & Heritage Special Area of Interest: Climate Change