On April 22nd GVI Fiji’s team celebrated Earth Day by planting Vesi trees at Ratu Meli Memorial School (RMMS). Vesi are commonly used for coastal protection and windbreaks in Fiji, but in this case the main purpose for planting these trees was to help prevent soil erosion and flooding that occurs at the school during the rainy season. The volunteers were helped by groups of Class 7 and 8 students who were extremely enthusiastic and keen to get involved.
A total of 18 trees were planted at RMMS, and each group of students will continue to monitor the growth of the trees that they planted as part of their weekly gardening lessons. The aim of getting the students involved in the planting of the Vesi trees was to foster a sense of responsibility for their group’s trees and in so doing ensure they are cared for and properly nurtured. The students were already talking about a competition to see whose tree will grow fastest and tallest! In addition to planting the trees, the volunteers also facilitated discussions with the students about the importance of trees, protecting the environment and climate change. When asked why it is beneficial to have more trees in their villages and around the school, many of the students shouted out that it is because trees give you oxygen and provide shade
Along with promoting Earth Day, planting Vesi will also help RMMS become recognized as a Blue School by the International Rainwater Harvesting Alliance. In addition to re-forestation initiatives, the Blue Schools Programme aims to increase the scope of lessons on environmental protection in schools and Earth Day presented an excellent opportunity for GVI to do so in a creative way with the students of Ratu Meli School.
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When we started this project in 2012, about 60 dogs in the Karen community of Huay Pakoot were living without basic medical care. They suffered from fleas, ticks, worms and are susceptible to fatal diseases such as rabies, parvo and distemper.
Over the last year, we have been working hard on vaccinating the local dogs and to provide sterilisation to prevent the reintroduction of more stray dogs which cannot be looked after. In our last report, we mentioned the sad news that some dogs that had not received their vaccinations yet had unfortunately died. A volunteer with a background in the animal health field believed that the disease was ‘Distemper’. Luckily afterwards though, no other dogs had shown symptoms in Huay Pakoot.
Since this time, we have been using donations to continue vaccinating and sterilising the dogs to prevent such tragedies from occurring. Thank you for your continuing support, the funds received to have helped us close in on our goal.
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Year-round GVI supports the Nyota Ing’arayo or Shining Star School in the Shauri Yako slums on the North edge of Mombasa. During school holidays, as slums are not great places for children to spend much free time, GVI organises a ‘holiday programme’. Holiday programmes include much one-on-one reading, colouring, playing games with the children and sometimes some swimming lessons and swimming fun. Last April, with enthusiastic sports focussed volunteers, we managed to organise a full-fledged sports day.
The sports day was without a doubt the highlight of everyone’s week. During a full day of sports activities students were divided into four teams, with a mix of grades and ages to keep the teams even. Each team was assigned a GVI volunteer as a team captain.
The day started with sprints. Students of similar ages competed against each–other, we continued with a game of captain ball and a long-jump competition. Then, there was a circuit relay, which created lots of excitement and fun for the children; they had to duck under a desk, skip 20 times, jump over tires and last but not least, eat a mandazi – a local triangular fried bread type snack – as fast as they could before running back to their team. Both kids and volunteers loved this. Next up were shot–puts and eventually a game of tug of war, first across the teams and then volunteers plus local teachers versus students. Everyone had a great day.
Sports very much give children from the Shauri Yako slums the opportunity to have some active fun during their holidays, and broaden their skill set and experience beyond playing football with a ball made out of elastic bands and plastic bags. Throughout the years donations of sports equipment have enabled us to introduce children to very different sports like cricket and tag rugby normally only played in more well off societies in Kenya. Sports for these children very much illustrates the importance of working as a team towards common goals, promoting health, strength, endurance, discipline, tolerance and sharing.
As a Nyota Ing’arayo primary school teacher put it - “we are finally teaching the mind and the heart “
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