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Kia ora
In mid May, Wellington couple Val and Birnie Duthie set off for Kiribati to start VSA assignments as English as a Second Language Trainers at the Marine Training Centre in Tarawa. Its been a while since we sent volunteers to Kiribati, which is one of the poorest countries in the Pacific; our last volunteer returned from there in March 2006. Its exciting to be re-establishing our relationship with Kiribati, and also with Samoa and Tonga. This reflects our decision, announced earlier this year, to focus our work in the wider Pacific, and phase out our programmes in South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Vietnam and Cambodia. But what really excites me is that while teaching English might not seem an obvious way to promote economic development, that is what the Duthies assignment will do. They will be working to improve the English standards of staff and students at the Marine Training Centre, which trains young I-Kiribati so they can get jobs in the international marine shipping industry. The remittances they send home are a vital part of the Kiribati economy. Learning how to speak English improves their employment prospects which in turn contributes to Kiribatis economic development. To me, its a great example of how we can use international volunteering in clever and creative ways to meet New Zealands development goals. Creativity lies at the heart of VSAs new strategic intent, which was approved by our Council at its meeting in May. We want to broaden our reach and offer innovative volunteering opportunities so more New Zealanders can share their skills in developing countries. One way we plan to do this is by increasing our short-term volunteering programme. Short-term assignments help meet the changing needs of our partner organisations. They also recognise the reality of life in the 21st century not all potential volunteers are able to commit to a two-year assignment. Were also in the process of setting up a new unit to explore and develop partnerships with New Zealand businesses and government organisations, particularly those working in agriculture, engineering, financial management and small business. We are in the early stages of discussing how these partnerships will work, but one possibility is that VSA will act as a broker, developing volunteer assignments for staff from the organisations we have partnered with. One thing we do know is that the appetite for international volunteering is as strong as ever, and that volunteering is well and truly entrenched as an effective development tool. We want to capitalise on this enthusiasm, and make VSA the face of New Zealands development programme. Its about real people playing real roles to achieve tangible, lasting results. Deborah Snelson, CEO
The New Zealand Government is proud to provide significant support through the New Zealand Aid Programme for New Zealand volunteers who work in a development capacity overseas.
VSA. All rights reserved. ISSN 1176-9904 Reproduction of content is allowed for usage in primary and secondary schools, and for tertiary studies. Vista is printed on environmentally responsible paper. It is chlorine free and manufactured using farmed eucalyptus trees.
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2 CoNVSATIoN News, views and
happenings
contents
vista issue one 2011
COVER: VSA volunteer howard Iseli (left) and his wife Jacqui cross a river with Paul ravun, who guided them on the three-day man Bush Trek on malekula Island in Vanuatu.
CoNVSATIoN
On the move
VSAs staff have been on the move both at our Wellington office and in the field.
At the end of April, all our Wellington staff moved onto one floor as part of our cost-efficiency drive. Previously we occupied two floors of the Dunbar Sloane building in Waring Taylor St. We are now in the process of finding tenants to sub-let the vacant floor. We have also had some staff changes in the field. Camille Kirtlan, our Papua New Guinea country programme manager pictured here schmoozing with Extreme Fishing star Robson Green, who judged the recent Miss Billfish competition in Kokopo while he was filming in PNG has now finished her two-year posting in PNG. She has been replaced by Hannah Stewart, who previously worked as Pacific programme officer in our Wellington office. Hannahs husband Michael has accompanied her to Kokopo and has now started a VSA assignment as a teacher trainer at Vunapope International Primary School. Camille has returned to Wellington to take up a position as programme officer supporting our volunteers in Timor-leste and Polynesia. She will also be responsible for VSAs Asia and Africa programmes until they finish on 31 December 2011 and 31 March 2012 respectively. Karen Horton will finish her posting as Cambodia country programme manager at the end of June, and will take up a posting as country programme manager for Timor-leste at the beginning of August.
Calendar boy
Papua New Guinea volunteer Antony Rewcastle has been immortalised in a 2011 calendar drawn by one of the boys in the Papua New Guinea village of Toimtop, where Antony works as an eco-forestry adviser. Clarence Vomne, 11, drew Antony undertaking a variety of exciting activities, including flying to PNG from New Zealand, building a chicken house, cutting a big long snake, and diving for fish. Clarence has exercised a certain amount of artistic licence in putting together his calendar: No, I dont have pink speedos, Antony told us when he sent through the images. Visit www.vsa.org.nz/blog/clarence-s-calendar to see the full calendar.
CoNVSATIoN
Cambodia-based volunteers had a chance to meet former VSA patron Dame Silvia Cartwright (fourth from left) at a drinks party hosted by Dame Silvia in Phnom Penh in April. Dame Silvia was patron of VSA during her time as Governor-General. She is now one of the international judges sitting on the Cambodia War Crimes Tribunal based in Phnom Penh. Farib Sos (left), chair of VSAs Council, helped organise the drinks evening on a recent trip to Cambodia. It was a good chance to celebrate the Kiwi-Cambodian connection, he says. About 45 people attended, including current and former volunteers and their partners, as well as several young Cambodians who studied at New Zealand universities.
Children from the village of Pidia in Bougainville, where Mister Pip is being filmed.
Best-dressed
Members of the Bulls rugby team in East New Britain are playing in North Otago uniforms this season, thanks to returned volunteer Bill Kingan and the North Otago Rugby Union. Bill coached the Bulls while he was on assignment as a farm business adviser at the PNG University of Natural Resources (formerly Vudal University). He was impressed by the teams enthusiasm and commitment, but he was less impressed by their uniforms a borrowed set from another club. They were really faded and worn. When Bill returned to Oamaru in October last year he approached North Otago Rugby Union chief executive Colin Jackson to see if they had any spare rugby jerseys. As it turned out, they had a complete set of North Otago representative uniforms available, including jerseys, socks and shorts. The smart new red and yellow uniforms along with some training manuals and DVDs were officially handed over to the team at a ceremony at the university in March. However they play this season, it will make them feel good, says Bill.
FeAtuRe
Tourism is vital to Vanuatus growing economy. Ruth Nichol looks at the work VSAs volunteers are doing to help rural Ni-Vanuatu develop small, sustainable tourism ventures to supplement their subsistence lifestyles.
The first meal the tourism students at Torgil Rural Training Centre in Vanuatu cooked at the centres new training restaurant was simple corned beef hash, rice, pawpaw, cucumber and spring onion. But their local customers thoroughly enjoyed it. The students love to cook, says VSA tourism and hospitality coordinator Linda Bennie, who helped set up the training restaurant earlier this year. We run the restaurant every Thursday lunchtime. Its really good experience for the students to learn how to cook a meal, how to set a table and serve food. What we do is very basic things like learning how to serve from the left, and the importance of smiling. Linda, who works with 11 first-year and six second-year tourism students at the training centre on the island of Ambae, is on assignment with her husband Jim, who is working as a tourism business adviser. The couple, who previously ran a hospitality training school in Wellington, are among six VSA volunteers now working in the tourism sector in Vanuatu. Most of them are based on Vanuatus outer islands the larger of the 80 or so islands that sit north of the countrys most densely populated island, Efate. Tourism accounts for around 40 per cent of Vanuatus GDP, and has been a major factor in turning the country of 247,000 into a Melanesian success story. Last year, almost 100,000 tourists flew into Vanuatu up from 58,000 in 2000 and another 140,000 arrived by cruise ship.
FeAtuRe
TOP: Local style in the bedroom of a Vanuatu bungalow. BOTTOM: The training restaurant at the Torgil rural Training Centre.
Like many Pacific nations, Vanuatu faces rural depopulation and urban overcrowding as people leave their villages and go to town. The jobs created by small, local tourism ventures help to reverse that trend.
They are attracted by the beautiful scenery, the world-class snorkelling, the bush walks, the active volcanoes, the famous land divers of Pentecost Island, and for the more macabre-minded the former cannibal and World War Two plane-crash sites. Until recently, most tourism ventures in Vanuatu were foreignowned, but local operators are becoming increasingly common. Many Ni-Vanuatu now run tours and treks, and a growing number have built small bungalows or guest houses local-style accommodation that ranges from very simple to relatively luxurious. However, despite the huge increase in tourist numbers over the last decade, the vast majority of them only visit the capital, Port Vila, on the island of Efate, and the islands of Santo to the north and Tanna to the south. Tourism is a big priority for the Vanuatu government, explains VSAs Vanuatu Country Programme Manager Diane ThorneGeorge. The aim is to try to create a more equal spread of tourism throughout the country at the moment most tourists are only going to Vila. According to Peter Swain, VSAs Pacific programme manager, at present there are few opportunities for Ni-Vanuatu living in rural communities to make some cash to supplement their subsistence lifestyles. The work that VSAs volunteers are doing is helping all Ni-Vanuatu get a bigger slice of the tourism pie, and to get cash flowing into remote communities. Like many Pacific nations, Vanuatu faces rural depopulation and urban overcrowding as people leave their villages and go to town. The jobs created by small, local tourism ventures help to reverse that trend. Responsible, sustainable tourism has a good future in Vanuatu, and VSA volunteers are laying the foundations. The challenges the volunteers face vary according to where they are based. So few tourists visit Ambae, for example, that Linda and Jim Bennie didnt actually see one until four months after they arrived. There are lots of guest houses on Ambae, but unfortunately no guests, says Linda ruefully. But the lack of tourists hasnt stopped the couple from getting on with their assignments. Last year, Linda successfully found short work-experience placements for all her first-year students at resorts on Santo a four-hour boat ride away. One has now been taken on as a trainee chef at Village de Santo, and the resort owner is so impressed with the training at the centre she has promised to employ another student. Meanwhile, Jim has developed a new tourism curriculum that will be used at all of Vanuatus 28 rural training centres. He is now turning his attention to the tricky question of how to get more tourists to visit Ambae. Linda is confident that tourist numbers will eventually rise and that the visitors who make the journey wont be disappointed. Even though it can be difficult to get to Ambae, once you do its really fantastic. Its a similar story on the island of Emae, just north of Efate, where VSA's Vila-based tourism business adviser Mereana Mills has helped run tourism training programmes since she arrived in Vanuatu late last year. Despite being close to Port Vila, and having attractions such as Cook Reef its like a sandy beach in the middle of the sea few tourists visit Emae. Mereana says part of her role is to help local tourism operators keep their expectations realistic. On the one hand, they need to provide the kinds of services international tourists expect a flush toilet (or a good-quality long-drop), clean sheets, a shower, and an evening meal. On the other, simply providing those services is no guarantee that tourists will want to use them. Theres been this mentality that, if you build a bungalow, tourists will come, but that doesnt always happen, she says. Its a case of trying to manage expectations while lifting the game in terms of the quality of the services that currently exist. She believes the domestic tourism market is just as important as international tourism when it comes to generating income for rural communities. One of the opportunities on Emae, for example, is local people
FeAtuRe
Local guide Paul ravun with howard Iseli (front right), his wife Jacqui and an Italian tourist on the man Bush Trek.
going there for a particular reason staff from the local cellphone company, or from government departments; expatriates exploring island life. As part of our training we point out that they are tourists too, and theres no reason why they shouldnt be able to get the same level of service as international tourists. Its also a safe way for local operators to practice their training for when they do have international guests. Appearing on a popular television show is one way of boosting your profile with international tourists. Thats been the case for the island of Malekula which featured in a 2009 episode of Intrepid Journeys starring Dancing With The Stars judge Brendan Cole. Malekula has also featured quite prominently in Lonely Planet, says VSAs Howard Iseli, who has been working as a tourism business adviser on the island since September last year. It means theres some awareness of it as a destination as far as we can tell we get six or seven tourists here a day. Were also lucky to have daily flights from Vila. However, tourists find it difficult to get the information they need to book accommodation and activities on Malekula, such as the three-day Man Bush Trek that featured on Intrepid Journeys. Even calling a tourism operator direct can be hard because of the islands very basic telecommunications infrastructure. Howard is now involved in a project to set up a call centre in the tourism office in the town of Lakatoro to coordinate bookings. For the first six months well be in test mode. It will basically be me and Edna, the local tourism officer, with a phone and a laptop with internet access. We will have a dedicated website, and tourists will be able to email their interest and we will take their calls and bookings. Then well train a Ni-Vanuatu to run the call centre, which will be owned and overseen by the local tourism association, and self-funded through commission fees. Howard feels positive about the future of tourism in Malekula. I think the time is now right for Malekula to take the next step. We have the unique tribal cultures of the Big Nambas and Small Nambas, and a nucleus of products now reaching an acceptable standard. Things are even further ahead on the island of Santo, which is Vanuatus second biggest tourist destination. That means that Santo-based VSA volunteer Karen Henry is in the relatively luxurious position of working with local tourism operators to develop and market products to an existing customer base.
Things are going reasonably well in Santo because we have established networks coming from New Caledonia and Europe, as well as lots of Australians and New Zealanders. But we certainly need a lot more tourists to make a difference to the rural tourism operators. Since she arrived last May Karen has helped local business owners create brochures and fliers to display at the local tourist information office and distribute to visiting cruise ships. More recently she has been helping to promote a new two-day trek due to open in June. She is also helping organise the inaugural Big Bay Cultural Festival, a one-day celebration of local culture being held at Big Bay on 17 July.
Sometimes small local tourism operators feel they cant compete with the big expat companies, but they can they can easily create what tourists want using local materials and local products.
Its about offering a soft adventure experience to tourists who want to get off their comfortable beach chair and explore their surroundings, and experience the local culture. Karen has recently started working on a new programme to provide tourism training to bungalow and guest house owners on Santo and the nearby island of Malo. She will support the participants as they work through their training modules. Its a bit like business mentoring, she says. It gives them a chance to think about the future of their business. We will also be looking at things such as what is going on in the tourism industry, where tourists come from and how they get there, and what their expectations are in terms of service. Like Howard, she feels positive about the future of tourism in Vanuatu. Sometimes small local tourism operators feel they cant compete with the big expat companies, she says. But they can they can easily create what tourists want using local materials and local products.
FeAtuRe
Volunteer teacher richard mackay with a pupil from the recorder club he set up at the Government Secondary School in Serian, Sarawak. The photo was used to advertise VSAs 1967 school leavers programme.
the governments of OECD countries have carefully placed their money, and controlled how it has been spent, according to geographical alliances and historical ties. Now, with worldwide recession, concerns about climate change, and a swing to more conservative political policies, aid and development programmes face uncertainty. At times of financial stress governments become less altruistic, and more pragmatic about where they spend their money. In this environment, volunteering for development faces interesting challenges as it continues to evolve in the context of the ever-changing needs of the billion-dollar aid and development sector.
FeAtuRe
This evolution can be seen in recent changes at VSA, which announced earlier this year that it is expanding its short-term volunteering programme to meet the changing needs of its partner organisations and provide more skilled New Zealanders with the opportunity to volunteer. Many similar agencies around the world are doing the same. A recent report on international volunteering by Cliff Allum, the chief executive officer of British volunteering organisation Skillshare International, identifies short-term volunteering as one of the major changes in volunteering in the last decade. His report, New Developments in Programme Models, suggests that this interest in short-term placements has come partly from the growing relationship between volunteering agencies and the corporate sector. VSAs Australian counterpart, AVI, has been one of the pioneers in developing these new relationships. In the last few years, it has re-evaulated its partnerships, and used its skills in recruiting and briefing for cross-cultural professional contact to open up new partnerships and opportunities. This has resulted, for example, in a partnership with the ANZ bank to provide volunteering opportunities to ANZ staff throughout Asia and the Pacific. Among the projects being piloted as part of this new partnership is one in which ANZ staff in Papua New Guinea work as volunteers with the national university to help improve student administration processes. VSA, too, has started exploring partnership opportunities with a wide range of private sector and government organisations. This may eventually see VSA acting as a broker for organisations keen to develop short-term volunteering opportunities for their staff. Cliff Allums report identifies other significant changes in volunteering. These include the development of south to south volunteering, in which volunteers in developing countries come from other developing countries. This has happened in his own organisation which has, for example, recruited Nigerian doctors to work in Mozambique. He says south to south volunteering has developed partly in response to the realisation that volunteers from developing countries often have experiences that make them more effective than their counterparts from developed countries. Online or virtual volunteering is another growing area in the sector, as is voluntourism, the growing volunteering tourism industry which encourages those with disposable income to pay to spend their holidays volunteering in parts of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. The popularity of voluntourism reflects the continuing appetite for volunteering. But according to VSAs chief executive officer Debbie Snelson, it can make it difficult for the public to understand what volunteers working in development actually do, and where they fit. These changes have been watched with interest by the International Forum on Development Service (known as FORUM), the leading network of international volunteer organisations. Snelson has chaired FORUM for the last two years. She says it has been an excellent mechanism for members to share ideas about different ways of involving volunteers in development programmes, and getting a wider range of people volunteering by building relationships with sectors not traditionally seen as development players. NGOs in our area are aware that eradicating poverty requires systematic change not just in skills but sustainable financial
RIGHT: VSAs
working with preschool coordinators from the Vanuatu eli Jaelhud Asosiesen (VeJA). margarettes assignment finished last year.
South to south volunteering has developed partly in response to the realisation that volunteers from developing countries often have experiences that make them more effective than their counterparts from developed countries.
resources, policy changes at government level, and ongoing research. So for the volunteers work to lead to sustainable change, organisations like VSA need to be working alongside governments, private enterprise, and communities. However, like most in the sector Snelson sees long-term volunteering as the most effective model; she says it will continue to remain at the core of VSAs work. This stand is backed by recent research looking at the effectiveness of long-term (a year or more) volunteering for development carried out at Murdoch University in Perth. It concluded that long-term volunteering fills a niche not covered by large donors and projects. Peter Devereux, a lecturer in sustainable development at Murdoch University, interviewed international volunteers and other stakeholders in 80 countries, looking at long-term volunteering and its characteristics, contributions and recognition. He found that effective, long-term international volunteering for development builds connections that bigger programmes cannot. International volunteers highlight the importance of local accountability, respect for local values and knowledge, the appropriate pace and character of interventions, and the need to remain engaged despite difficult conditions all fundamentals of capacity development.
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An award-winning
Former VSA volunteer Dorothy Cullotys passion for the food of lao PDR has been recognised at the prestigious Gourmand World Food Cookbook Awards. Her cookbook, Food from Northern Laos: The Boat Landing Cookbook, was judged runner up, best Asian cookbook in the 2010 awards, announced in Paris in March this year. Dorothy spent three and a half years on assignment for VSA as an adviser with the Rural Research and Development Training Centre in Vientiane in lao PDR, finishing in February 2008. She was accompanied by her husband Kees Springers, a photographer, who took the photographs for the book. Dorothy was one of 32 volunteers who went on assignment to lao PDR between 1988 and 2010. VSA suspended its programme there late last year as part of our move to focus our work in the wider Pacific area. The last VSA volunteer to work in lao PDR, Ken McIntyre, returned in December after two years teaching English to government officials and mentoring English teachers at the lao PDR Institute of Foreign Affairs. He has recently started a new assignment in Timor-leste. Dorothy, who now lives in Thailand, has been passionate about the food of lao PDR for many years. Before her VSA assignment she produced nine postcards of lao PDR recipes, as well as a lao PDR and English guide to the vegetables of lao. She describes the food of lao PDR as the ultimate in slow food. In laos, the local fresh markets and forest provide an abundance of local produce, harvested or gathered the same day. Slow food is what lao food is all about its food that is locally and sustainably produced, and always fresh. The recipes in the book are based on those made at the Boat landing Guest House and Restaurant, an eco-lodge in luang Namtha, a province in the north-west of the country. They feature ingredients such as chilli wood and snake gourd, as well as more traditional Asian ingredients such as lemongrass, fish sauce and fresh coriander. To find out more or to order copies of the book, visit http://www.foodfromnorthernlaos.com
MeThod
Slice the beans diagonally or halve them. Steam the vegetables for a few minutes until lightly cooked. Remove to a mixing bowl. Dry roast the sesame seeds until golden if using. Remove them before completely browned. Set aside to cool. Put the peeled, roasted garlic cloves and salt in a mortar. Slice the roasted ginger if using. Add to the mortar. Pound the ingredients together until well-integrated. Tip this mixture over the beans. Add the soy and fish sauce and gently mix into the salad by hand. Add the chopped herbs. Add the dry roasted sesame seeds if using and gently mix in by hand. Transfer the mixture to a serving dish. Serves two to four depending on the number of accompanying dishes.
VArIATIoN: Be a non-traditional hedonist and use both sesame seeds and ginger. The taste is great! For a lowland lao flavour, use 1 T dill instead of Vietnamese mint.
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You can post copies of photos (please dont send originals) to: Alana mcCrossin Graphic Designer VSA, PO Box 12246 Wellington 6144 You can also email a low-res version to: design@vsa.org.nz
Were looking for more than just a good photo were looking for a great VSA story to go with it. If you have a photo or two from your VSA assignment that youd like to share, send us a copy, along with a brief summary of the story behind it.
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ndraising Coord Karla Paotonu, VSA Fu All VSA supporters Fundraising update
inator
GROWING SuppoRt
Hi Everyone
h k; my thoughts are wit urch earthquake struc nths since the Christch three mo As I write this its been s. uild their shattered live o are struggling to reb of just what a all those wh is heart-warming proof nded to the earthquake eks later, Kiwis w Zealand respo vastation just a few we The way the rest of Ne suffered even more de are. When Japan generous country we yet again. A opened their hearts of the communities VS focused on the needs tions we work , it can be hard to stay home organisa With so much need at h, many of the partner people of Christchurc aling with ers; many are also de h overseas. But like the works wit natural disast ir communities following uild the with are helping to reb ath of civil conflict. the afterm to support our work, this year. If youd like eady donated to VSA n use the Freepost ne who has alr d post it to us you ca Id like to thank everyo s page. Just fill it out an attached to thi use the donation form of postage! mp saves us the cost option but a sta ising activities. about our recent fundra hed is a quick update Attac Thanks for your suppo Karla Karla Paotonu inator VSA Fundraising Coord g.nz www.vsa.or rt.
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