By Tupou Vaipulu Jr
A week-long Blue Pacific Youth Champions’ workshop was launched by the US Peace Corps with a welcome Kava Ceremony for Blue Pacific Youth Champions at Niu Lodge in Popua, today, 15 October 2024.
The workshop is part of the Blue Pacific Youth Initiative, launched in May to build resilience to climate change in the Pacific.
The Regional Advisor for Peace Corps, Mr. Clayton Kennedy told Matangi Tonga that the initiative was launched to upskill youth. Fourteen Blue Pacific Youth Champions have traveled to Tonga from Samoa, Vanuatu and Fiji.
“The Blue Pacific Initiative is a Pacific-wide initiative that was launched to support young champions in the Pacific to build the skills they need to truly be in the frontline of moving their communities to resilience,” he said.
Peace Corps Tonga Director of Program and Training, Mr. Dave Chung, said there are four themes for the project, and two earlier workshops were held in Vanuatu and Fiji.
In Tonga, the workshop will be focused on the theme ‘Facilitation’.
“Over the course of the week, they will be learning reflecting on their time in their communities since the last conferences in Vanuatu and Fiji, learning to facilitate sessions on community-centered participatory approaches to development, creating their own contextualized climate adaptation and resilience manuals, learn about some of Tonga’s natural resources, interface with communities in Tonga that are still coping with the aftermath of the tsunami in 2022, as well as preparing for their side-event at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Apia, Samoa next week,” he said.
The 16 youth champions will move on to theme four of the workshop next week, in Samoa, where they will participate in the Commonwealth Youth Forum.
