About me…

I came to Vanuatu on a two year contract with VSA, the volunteer organization supported by the NZ government. My job is to work with an NGO that develops kindergartens and trains kindergarten teachers in Luganville town, on Santo Island in the Northern Provinces. In the third world, rural living is becoming increasingly difficult, people who live in villages in real poverty, often the ones who do not inherit the family land, move to the towns and cities to look for employment. The towns end up swelling, squatters make settlements on the edge, and these new settlements don’t have schools, water or garbage collection, they are often called slums or shanties. Vanuatu has a small population, but its rough terrain and dense jungle make many communities isolated and without running water and medical care. If a family knows anyone at all in the town, they can send someone to stay with them. It is a culture where everybody seems to be related in some way to everybody else, families are large, and if one family member has a job, they must give money to all the others. Luganville has some people who have jobs, including primary and secondary school teachers, government workers and bank tellers. The town also has thousands of people that don’t have jobs, they just hang around in the street in groups. I work with the teachers of the 20 kindergartens in the town. There are only one or two trained kindergarten teachers as there is not a lot of opportunity to study. The training is a ‘distance learning’ certificate through Fiji but it is too hard for teachers to do alone, many of whom have only attended six years of a poor quality primary school. I help the teachers to design learning programmes, as well as train local teachers to do my job, so that they can continue after I leave. I also encourage and assist teachers to study the certificate, many of whom need a lot of support. Early childhood is actually one of the most vital and important times in a child’s brain development. The growth and changes in the brain before a child is six is vital. Children without opportunities to develop properly during this time will be severely affected later in life.  By improving education at this early stage, it is a unique chance to raise the level of critical thinking, problem solving and social behaviour, of the future generations of your country. It is much more difficult to change the social behaviour and intellectual capacity of a child who had no opportunity to develop before six. With better education, people of the third world have the tools to reduce the crime rate, and develop a stronger, more peaceful and less poverty-stricken future for their country.