By Dane Marx | GVI Fiji, Country Director
Dear Supporters,
GVI Fiji would like to extend a huge thank you, vinaka vaka levu, to our Charitable Trust donors for their support over the past year. It has been a challenging year as our team and our partner communities faced devastating losses following the landfall of monster Cyclone Winston. GVI Fiji are looking forward to a very productive 2017 and will be making the most of a difficult situation by refreshing, rebuilding, and improving all of our projects.
Our community ties have grown even stronger as together we all faced difficult losses and worked cooperatively to recover. Our projects in the coming years will continue to focus on collaboratively developing sustainable solutions to issues facing the community as the challenges of a changing climate, and shifting social conditions affect the lives of the citizens of Dawasamu District.
2016 Context- Cyclone Winston
It is impossible to discuss our achievements without first discussing Cyclone Winston, a category five cyclone that made landfall directly over Fiji on February 20, 2016, causing widespread damage to buildings, schools, homes, infrastructure and agriculture, leaving no aspect of life untouched. In GVI Fiji’s partner communities in Dawasamu District, both primary and secondary schools were devastated, roofs were ripped off, classroom furniture destroyed, and all school supplies left unsalvageable. Many homes and farms sustained massive damage as the 300+km/h wind blew through the region and the tidal surge flooded the remaining houses. This extensive damage included the complete destruction of GVI’s Babale Base, including all volunteer bures, kitchen, and communal spaces, and the loss of nearly all educational resources and equipment that had been collected and developed over the past years.
After the cyclone, it remains a priority for GVI Fiji to spend donations wisely, and this process became especially important as the Cyclone response brought a wide variety of international NGOs and the Fijian Government into the Dawasamu District to offer assistance and funding. It was crucial for GVI Fiji staff to work collaboratively with various NGOs to ensure that funds were being allocated efficiently and effectively, and to avoid overlapping funds. Government funds, for example, have been set aside for the repair and reconstruction of homes and schools, however the scarcity of building materials across Fiji have slowed repairs. In response, GVI Fiji focused our budget on priority areas identified by our partner communities that were overlooked by the Fijian government and other NGOs as well as offering First Response assistance to families in need.
As GVI Fiji continued to repair, replace and reinvent the multitude of educational resources utilized by our teaching volunteers and school partners, the purchase of a paper binding machine became a necessary resource in order to create professional, organized and long-lasting resources. Funds have been wisely spent on this machine which has already been used extensively on resource building for the upcoming school year. We have also allocated funds to replace all school supplies that we lost at the beginning of the 2017 school year when school resumes.
We’d like to extend a massive thank you for your support this year. 2016 was a reminder to us of how generous and compassionate the world can be, thank you for reminding us of that!
We wish you a happy and prosperous 2017!
With Gratitude,
GVI Fiji
By Zara Roche | GVI Fiji, Program Coordinator
By Michele Comber | GVI Fiji, Program Manager
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
