Excerpts from National Fundraising Drive Events : Walkathon, Charity Gala Dinner and 'The Open Day and Fete'

We just finished the 10 week-long 'National Fundraising Drive'. It was a lot of hard work. I had three very hard working individuals in this team Hiroyuki Saito, Pauline Orikasa and Iris Freynhagen - Our Diversity became Our Strength! We had good times and bad but we throughly enjoyed the whole exercise. The satisfaction of helping the able students of the centre was enormous to keep us going even when the goinng was tough. It was very demanding for me especially with full time work and I had find time to cope up with the pressure of coordinating this project! Also the support from my husband and daughter was enormous as usual.

We had to reschedule the dates for the three events:

19th July: Walkathon

9th August: Charity Gala Dinner

5th September: Open Day and Fete

I shall place some of the photos shortly from the vaious events would very well describe the essence of the work put in as well as a good description of what happened! Below is the photo taken at the Charity Gala Dinner held at Holiday Inn Suva. The staff and management of Holiday Inn was supportive and forthcoming.

My current project: Coordinating Nationwide Fundraising Drive for FVTTCPD

After a successful fundrasing ' The Inaugral fete and Open day' that I coordinated last year in July, they approached me to coordinate a bigger one this year and the target is 100 grand! I have agreed to do it with certain set of rules laid down for all of us, had the first meeting with school last week. FVTTCPD now have another senior JICA volunteer, Hiroyuki Saito and one junior volunteer, they have come in place of Kinji, Miho and Saya. Saito's working style is quite similar to mine and so I think I will work well with him too. The basis of the fundraising is 'financial sustainability' of the centre. Keeping this in mind, we have identified 5 income generating projects in different sections of FVTTCPD, thus these 5 projects have become our reason to fundraise this year. We have an accountant who will ensure the tiny detail is taken care of and report will be audited. We have so far planned out three import dates:
27th June: Launch/ Opening of the Nationwide Fundraising Drive (NFD)
25th July: Corporate dinner (targeting major sponsors/ donors)
7th August: Closing of the NFD during the Fete & Open Day
It is going to be very demanding but its all for a very good cause and I am now all focussed towards it, all my free time is dedicated towards this project!

Activities as a Soroptimist in Fiji

I have always enjoyed soroptimist extension activities. During my time as the President of SI Lae, I other members of SI Lae in Papua New Guinea, I with three other members formed an extension team and worked very hard for 6 months to charter SI Port Moresby on 27th Nov. 2005. After coming to Fiji, a close soroptimist friend from Rakiraki mentioned similar possibilities in Lautoka during the time I was in Lautoka in dec. 2007 for 2 months. We then formed a team and started working towards it and we finally managed to charter SI Lautoka on 10th May 2008, thank you again to my daughter for her help with desk-top publishing during this exercise. It always gives me great pleasure to be a part of such activities. Some photos from SI Lautoka charter:

Another aspect we have worked on is publicising 'Soroptimist International' and its activities in Fiji. We have done very well since November last year and made sure media is aware of our activities and SI gets due publicity for its efforts towards helping women and girls all over the country and world. The recent charter ceremony was covered by all the three leading english newspapers in the country.

'Light Up Village' Project has finally become a reality

'Light Up Village' project that I was busy coordinating as an IWA (International Women's Association) member since August last year (2007) has finally become a reality. Three villages namely, Visoqo, Cawadevo and Nasovivi in Macuata Province have finally got light, thanks to funding provided by Canada Fund, GEF and International Women's Association. IWA supported Nasovivi village. It was a very good learning experince for me too, though Atul is a renewable energy expert and I do get a chance to learn things from him but doing a project gave me an opportunity to learn better. Atul and Jan were our energy experts for this project. Some pictures from these three villages.

Nasovivi village shown in the photo below: