“Building and strengthening institutional capacity should be the focus if we are to take control of our destiny to ensure an inclusive, representative, and responsive state. Institutions need to be strengthened by providing professional development for the workforce. This is necessary to ensure service is delivered satisfactorily to the people. As leaders in influential institutions, we need such professional development to respond effectively to people’s needs.”

The training which took place at the Vanuatu Christian Council’s Conference Room was attended by representatives from the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET), Vanuatu Skills Partnership, Provincial Skills Centers, Provincial Government Councils, Vanuatu Public Administration and Management (VIPAM) and the Department of Local Authorities.

 Acting Manager of VIPAM, James Malteres, thanked the VSP for including Secretary Generals from the provincial government councils in the development leadership training. “The training is important for effective decentralization policy implementation. “While all government’s policies and activities are aligned with the Vanuatu National Sustainable Developmental

Plan (VNSDP) 2016 -2030, there are major challenges in implementing the plan.” He said ” Providing service delivery is a core pillar of the VNSDP and a major challenge to achieving better service delivery is how line agencies communicate and execute to deliver. The Public Service Commission (PSC) is the implementing agency to ensure satisfactory service delivery mechanisms are in place and such development leadership training, will contribute to changing management mindsets, to improve service delivery.”

Facilitated by Tong Liston from the Australia National University (ANU), the training focused on the theme: ‘Leadership in action, powerful human leadership skills’.

The Vanuatu Skills Partnership is supported by the Australian Government.

Source: Vanuatu Daily Post

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The Assistant Agriculture Officer (AAO) for Mota Lava, Daniel Neneth, said the main idea of this model is to encourage people to do backyard gardens as most gardens are far away from the villages.

“Integrated backyard farming is important as only a small space is needed to implement many agricultural activities to assist in maintaining food security and livelihood of people,” AAO Neneth explained.

“This farming system includes feeding chickens, using chicken manure to plant vegetables, aquaculture fish farming and using its water to water the vegetables. At the end of the day we have sufficient food to feed our families.

Integrated Farming system on Rah island (Dori Lagoon Bungalow)

With the tourism development projects in Rah island, the Vanuatu Skills Partnership, working in partnership with the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, Tourism Department and Livestock Department has set up the second integrated farming system to assist resort and bungalow owners to ensure vegetables are readily available at their backyard.

The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) continues to advise farmers to establish such farming system.AAO Neneth said, “many farmers are already indicating their interest so currently, DARD is working with the departments of Livestock and Fisheries to ensure the model integrated farming system at the Agriculture station is equipped with ducks, chicks and tilapia fish so that more integrated farms will be established.”

The benefit of integrated backyard farming is it increases productivity of different varieties of root crops and small livestock animals, as well as the profitability of using animal manure provides opportunity to smallholder farmers to adopt a new technology, and this approach is safe to the environment.

AAO Neneth encouraged farmers and schools around Mota Lava and TORBA province to visit the integrated farming system at the Agriculture Station.

Field days will be organized for students and farmers to visit the integrated farming system model and if anyone is interested, DARD officers will assist in setting up their farming system.

Vanuatu communities must fight against the impacts of climate change that is currently affecting us and to ensure it does not affect our food security, thus the only way is to come up with farming systems that are resilient to changes in the weather pattern.The growing population pressure on small islands like Mota Lava with limited land for farming, burdens their food and nutrition security. So, the integrated backyard farming model is suitable to address these challenges.

The vision of the National Sustainable Development Plan targets a stable, sustainable and prosperous Vanuatu by 2030. There are three development aspiration that we could relate to, the first being us maintaining a natural environment on cultivated land that produce our local food, culture, economic and ecological need. The second is to ensure a high resilience capacity on climate change and other natural disaster and the third being a stable economic base on equitable, sustainable growth that creates employment and revenue in rural and urban areas.

The Department of Agriculture is mandated to assist farmers with technical knowledge on farming systems to reduce the impacts of climate change and to ensure food security and adequate food to sustain life of families and if there is surplus they can be sold to earn income.

The National Agriculture Policy has  directive approach that addresses ‘environment friendly agriculture’ (Thematic area 8) and ‘food and nutrition security needs ‘(Thematic area 10) for the people of Vanuatu to work together with other stakeholders to address).

Source: Vanuatu Daily Post

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The agreement seeks to address the Cocoa industry in Vanuatu in rehabilitating and replanting of cocoa plantations, improve the quality of cocoa beans “premium quality” and increase volume of cocoa beans produced, to potentially value add beans locally to produce cocoa mass (paste), to establish and develop sustainable cocoa family farmers’ businesses and to facilitate upgrade of infrastructural developments for effective trade facilitation and enable market access.

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16 participants are learning new plumbing skills in irrigation and piping, water tank installation and occupational health and safety. James Matariki is the lead trainer—James is the only formally qualified Ni-Vanuatu plumber in Vanuatu. He studied with the Australia-Pacific Technical College and is very enthusiastic about sharing his industry skills and knowledge with the trainees. The trainees come from private sector, public enterprises and self-employed trades operators. Some of the trainees have existing plumbing skills. This program will provide an opportunity for them to receive formal recognition, and build new skills to improve their businesses.

The qualification comprises 4 units from the Certificate 2 in Plumbing. James and co-trainer Willie Ben Tabi are delivering a mix of theoretical and practical skills with an emphasis on onsite training at the village. This qualification was developed by the Vanuatu Qualifications Authority in response to demand for plumbing skills in the national building and construction industry. James has been affiliated with the Torgil RTC to help the training centre increase its capacity to deliver flexible skills training that is nationally accredited. This will provide the trainees with new pathways to employment and further study through the Australia Pacific Training Coalition.

The result of the plumbing skills training program will be improved plumbing and water facilities for the kindergarten, primary school, staff accommodation at the village. This valuable hands-on training demonstrates how training providers in Vanuatu are meeting the challenge of delivering accredited training in rural areas – taking the training to where it is in demand and meeting the needs of local businesses and communities. With an increase in the availability of plumbing services,  businesses in the busy tourism areas of Santo can look forward to engaging skilled operators to help maintain important infrastructure.

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The first activity in this project has now been successfully delivered as a workshop to enhance some of the most urgent training needs for DARD staff. The Professional Skills Development Workshop at Lonnoc Bay, Santo from April 9-11, 2019 covered the role of extension and the importance of clear communication and community engagement when working with farmers and their communities, along with basic computing skills (for the more junior staff) and the role of leadership and management (for those in senior roles).

The workshop was attended by 51 DARD staff along with VSP representatives and fully qualified consultants. The target audience was Assistant Agricultural Officers, Provincial Agricultural Officers and Technical Officers. Feedback from the workshop attendees was overwhelmingly positive, with most of those surveyed stating that their core skills and understanding had been considerably enhanced. Among the few complaints was that more time would have been useful to explore all areas more comprehensively. The Skills Development Priority Project will continue with the Vanuatu Extension Forum scheduled for July in Santo. DARD hopes to use this event for the Ministerial launching of the Vanuatu Agricultural Extension Policy.

Source: Vanuatu Daily Post 

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The donation of 80+ rolls of garment was presented to the Partnership director—Fremden Yanhambath at Tana Russet compound. 

The donation from Tana Plaza Pharmacy has demonstrated another partnership linkage with the private sector to help in the drive of strengthening and supporting the textile community supported through the Sanma Skills Centre in Luganville, Santo

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This first ever three-day workshop of its kind that brought officers from the six provinces of Vanuatu began yesterday and is the biggest gathering to date for DARD.

Agriculture Director, Antoine Ravo, said agriculture extension services dropped then the comprehensive reform programme resulted in the government centralizing the services at provincial headquarters. The Director reminded the participants of the principles that DARD is operating under, which is to be ‘strategic, innovative and high performing’.

“In this three-day workshop, some  outcomes  we want to see this year is to develop a smart extension services,” he said. “This smart extension services can only happen through partnership and skill that we have. We are happy to have this partnership (with VSP), which also reflects the policy of the Minister of Agriculture on the concept of Public-Private Partnership. We want to outsource some of our services such as provision of training to institutions such as Vanuatu Skills Partnership to help us upskill in areas that we need to improve in.

“We have to be skillful on time management. The Prime Minister says a lot of time public servants are weak in their time management to attend a meeting or to go to work or to respond to a farmer.

“We have to be skillful in communication. Sometimes when I call an officer they do not answer their phone but when it is time to work you have to communicate with officers and farmers.” Director Ravo added, “We have to be skillful in report writing. This is an area that we need to improve in to write a simple report that we can make decisions on and do proper planning.

“To collect data is also an area on how to collect good data to make a good report.We have to be also skillful to implement policies, strategies, legislation and business plans. If we do not understand it, our plans will be very hard to be implemented as well as priorities for the Department and Ministry.

“I believe we can do it and this can only happen through partnership that we have with stakeholders and one of them is here with us to run the workshop for us, which is the Vanuatu Skills Partnership.” The Director thanked officers present at the workshop for their work in the provinces.

Source: Daily Post Vanuatu

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Historically, tourism in Vanuatu has been focused on the ‘rest and relaxation’ market – those who stay in larger hotels or resorts and lie by the pool sipping cocktails. However, the 2016 International Visitors’ Survey suggests that there is an opportunity to increase growth in niche markets such as soft adventure, eco-tourism and cultural experiences, which are run by smaller local operators, based mainly in villages and towns in our outer islands.

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The workshop focussed on building  knowledge and skills in disability inclusion—with specific emphasis on understanding the barriers and challenges that people with disabilities face as workers and customers in the tourism sector and what can be done to address these.

Staff had the opportunity to hear lived experiences of people with disabilities themselves, presented by the members of the disability panel.

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“You are all serving the same people. The same person who has a tourism bungalow, also cultivates land to plant root crops, has livestock and go fishing to catch fish for his visitors,” DG Amos said during his official speech at the opening of Vanuatu Skills Partnership (VSP) productive sector partners directors’ meeting at Holiday Inn, Port Vila, on Thursday 14th March 2019.

The meeting was attended by directors from government departments and aid agencies that have been working in partnership with VSP over the years.

Directors from the Department of Tourism, Industry, Vanuatu Tourism Office, Department of Agriculture, managers, a representative from New Zealand High Commission and a representative from the Australian High Commission were present.

“This indicates that the government structure and its services, is resilient through different agencies.

“The Department of Agriculture assists with planting resilient crops, the Department of Livestock identifies livestock animals, the Department of Tourism looks at the agriculture products and the sea with its resources that Fisheries Department assists to manage them and key areas to improve bungalows,” said DG Amos.

The MALFFB DG said when the value chain with hygiene issues is considered, that is where the Industry Department comes in.

“The Industry Department plays a vital role in how to process and value-add and also identify overseas markets.”

DG Amos appealed to the directors at the meeting not to work in isolation.

“The challenge now is ‘how do we work as a team to ensure that resources that we have through our budget is shared?’ and when we deliver the services, ‘how do the grassroots in rural areas who don’t have a salary still get that maximum benefit?’

“Partnership is very important, not only within the government but also private sector.

“The government’s role is to make policies and regulate them, private sectors provide funds to implement activities, so our partnership with private sector is always very important.

“We are the regulators and police makers, they are the implementers for service delivery so partnership at all level, national level, sub national level and community level, is critically important.”

He added, “we only have one objective and this is to see how the lives of people struggling daily in the communities would change.

“If we need to make some changes to improve production, the collaboration and partnership is critically important.”

DG Amos said challenges faced should not be barriers but provide opportunities to work together to find innovative and creative ideas to drive the productive sectors and other sectors of Vanuatu forward.

“I encourage us all not to just talk but to show in our actions that we can work collaboratively.

“We are here to find common ways to work together. Public, Private Partnerships is the only way to drive our economy forward,” DG Amos concluded.

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