NFMV attended the handover of more than $75,000FJD worth of equipment to 15 Civil Society Organisations by the AusAID CSO Programme.
Australia’s Acting High Commissioner, Judith Robinson, handed over $75,000FJD worth of equipment to 15 Civil Society Organisations on the 29th of this month, an event that was attended by representatives from NFMV.
In total, 32 CSOs recieved $2.5million FJD of capital assets during the funding round for 2011. Ms Robinson noted that NFMV and the other organisations present at the handover, will “… contribute to development through improved service delivery.
The equipment will strengthen and grow networks (created by the CSOs)… in remote and rural communities and urban informal settlements”.
In May this year, NatureFiji-MareqetiViti (NFMV) successfully bid for an Australian Aid Infrastructure and Capital Grant, which enabled us to purchase a new 4WD vehicle and multi-function copier/scanner/fax.
The equipment purchased by the grant have greatly enhanced our capacity to implement many of our active projects. Particularly, the “Creating Permanent Forest Estates (PFEs)” awareness campaign around Viti Levu this year.
The vehicle has been used to travel to seven villages to present the PFE materials and information to more than 30 landowning units (mataqali).
The PFE workshops in the latter half of 2011 have been attended by a total of 303 i Taukei landowners who are the guardians of forested areas on Viti Levu.
The vehicle has also been used in the current American Iguana Eradication Campaign (AIEC) being led by NFMV and the Biosecurity Authority of Fiji (BAF).
In the six months since we have had the 4WD truck, it has travelled to Vuna Village (Taveuni) for awareness about the American Iguana where 108 community members attended the presentation.
It has also transported our training team to the Mua AIEC station, where 27 community representatives attended the Temporary Biosecurity Officers (TBOs) training.
The heavy duty multi-function copier/scanner/fax has been immensely useful and in total we have printed 14, 400+ monochrome pages since it was installed in May, including a copy of all of our reports produced thus far (which have been deposited with the Department of Environment librarian).
It was extremely helpful when we needed to print 200 copies of our American Iguana Field Guide, when these were required at short notice for AIEC activities recently.
Vinaka vakalevu to the Australian government and nation, and to the AusAID CSO Programme Team and associated staff (especially to Tim Gill, Leaine Robinson, and Maggie Boyle).