If you have been to Vanuatu you will know how beautiful her isles are and how gracious the Melanesian welcome is. You may have also heard it rated number one on the Happy Planet Index a few years ago as Happiest Place on Earth.
I joke with the team I work with there in my day job (I work for an international development agency based in Sydney but I island hop to PNG and Vanuatu) that it’s because of the amount of public holidays they get!
There is no doubt Ni-Vans are happy, warm, friendly and gorgeous people. Sadly, their nation also holds the number one place in the Pacific for illiteracy and women suffer at the hands of violent more than I care to think about. Girls and women do not as a rule hold positions of leadership and despite its strong tourist industry, poverty remains high.
I am taking my daughter Giorgia to this beautiful place today in what I am calling ‘Take your daughter to work week’!
She is on school holidays and I thought why not? She will visit a school near our office in Port Vila and do reading groups with primary children each day and while it will be helpful for them to have some much needed one on one time, their school system is extremely under resourced, it will make an impact on her as well.
It’s good to step outside of ourselves sometimes and acknowledge that what we have is not necessarily everybody’s experience and the life we live is someone else’s dream.
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Warmly,
Jane for team ‘a Girl & her world’
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