Posted on October, 03 2018

For better livelihoods, communities of Nailaga district, in the province of Ba, held a two day Sustainable Development Plan implementation discussion with the World Wide Fund for Nature – Pacific (WWF-Pacific).

WWF-Pacific’s climate change support officer, Apolosa Robaigau says the discussions with communities over the last two days at Nakavika settlement centred on the review of the district’s implementation work plan of the first five years of the district’s 20 Year, 2018-2038 Sustainable Development Plan.

“The community representatives will go over their implementation plan, with specifics on the first five years of their 2018 to 2038 Sustainable Development Plan.”

“They (communities) will also discuss their monitoring and evaluation plans and terms of reference for their Tikina Nailaga Development Committee’s (TNDC) scope of work or terms of reference. This ensures that their five year plan is achievable as the TNDC will take lead,” said Robaigau.

The “Living with Change: Resilient Mangroves, Fisheries and People of Fiji and PNG” project is a three year project that is funded by the German government and implemented in the districts of Nailaga, Nacula and Tavua by WWF-Pacific.

WWF-Pacific’s “Living with Change: Resilient Mangroves, Fisheries and People of Fiji” project manager, Alfred Ralifo says it is great to see active participation of communities of men, women and youth in the formulation of their implementation plan as this will ensure the communities take ownership of coordinating and implementing their sustainable development plans.

“Their active participation in the consultation process increases their awareness and self-recognition that they as a community are very capable of improving their standard of living by working together in unity with a common vision and also with the help of government and other development partners,” added Ralifo.

A few of the issues identified by the district were access to consistent, clean and safe drinking water, in addition to better infrastructure.

“A few of the communities of the district still need water tanks and majority need infrastructure upgrades such as proper and safer housing, better drainage systems, to access to farming lands and with it, assistance during the dry and rainy seasons”.

“We are very thankful to WWF-Pacific for the assistance towards our district,these discussions allowed the communities to identify their priority arears and set a plan within the next five years to address them,” highlighted Nailaga district representative, Tinalevu Vatemo.

Waisake Talekuli of Nawaqarua village adds the discussions held over the last two days provided the space for communities to discuss and find solutions as a district.

“The five year plan discussions will set up not only the communities individually but the district as a whole to work together and see what are the major key areas or issues. Previously, each community had to carry out their own planning and rarely there would be district involvement,” added Talekuli.

“It is good all the communities are involved as it should be much easier for development to be done as we are all working together under common aims,” added Kinisimere Ratu Qera, of Votua Village.

Ralifo adds that the next steps now for the district is to formalise their District Development Committee by finalisation of their terms of references, their constitution and also capacity building such as leadership, financial management, project planning, monitoring and evaluation, management skills, which will allow them to effectively coordinate the implementation of their district sustainable development plans.