Suva, Fiji – The Pacific Community has handed over training materials and tools to support the delivery of the Fiji National Qualifications in Resilience (CCA & DRR) at the Ministry of Youth Training centers in Suva and Labasa.
The official handover was an initiative of the European Union Pacific Technical and Vocational Education and Training on Sustainable Energy and Climate Change Adaptation (European Union PacTVET) project and the resources are expected to strengthen Fiji’s national capacity and technical expertise to respond to climate change adaptation (CCA) challenges.
Fiji’s Minister of Youth and Sports, Hon. Parveen Bala, commended the work of the EU PacTVET project, “The handover of resilience tools will ensure our youths are trained and empowered to tackle climate change issues and impacts”.
The project, which began in August 2014 and will end in December 2020, focuses on the Pacific region for 15 Pacific ACP countries: Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Republic of Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.
The EU Deputy Head of Delegation for the Pacific, Erja Askola, highlighted the need to build-up community resilience to help combat both climate change and COVID-19.
“In the current context of COVID-19 and the economic downturn that it has created, the private sector and the community activities will be key to jump-start the pacific economies and it is necessary to build up the resilience of the communities more than ever,” she explained.
SPC, through its EU-PacTVET project team, which is jointly implemented by SPC and the University of the South Pacific, explicitly works to enhance and create Pacific-African, Caribbean, and Pacific’s regional and national capacity and technical expertise to respond to climate change adaptation and sustainable energy challenges.
SPC’s Geoscience, Energy and Maritime (GEM) Division Director, Dr. Andrew Jones, shed light on “the emerging research in USA and Australia shows that younger workers are now less resilient than young people used to be.
“Pacific people are amongst the most resilient on the planet and it is really important that Pacific youth don’t go down the same path shown in the research”.
