Through the partnership of Government Ministries, Departments and Non-Government Organisations (NGOs), the Fiji Volunteer Services (FVS) will be expanding its scope of coverage.
This will involve the engagement of unemployed graduates and experienced personnel in areas of national and community interest. Agencies around the country have been requested to identify areas of need in their organization’s work programmes to identify such areas that volunteers could be recruited.
Through this program, ten unemployed teacher graduates have been recruited under the FVS to work with the Ministry of Education. The volunteers will assist the National Substance Abuse Advisory Council (NSAAC) staff in the conduct of Training and Awareness Programs in the areas of Drug and Substance Abuse, Non- Communicable Disease, Health Promotion, HIV & AIDS, Child abuse and other related social issues in schools and communities around the country.
The Fiji Volunteer Services was established under the National Employment Centre (NEC) Decree of 2009. The FVS engages persons who wish to serve society in the spirit of volunteering in any local and regional undertakings. Volunteers have been engaged to tackle development challenges in areas of health, education, climate change, disaster preparedness and management HIV/AIDS preventions and other areas of national and regional interest. The FVS currently engages 9 teachers in Vanuatu, 6 teachers in Nauru and 9 teachers in Tuvalu with the second batch of 9 teachers for the Republic of Marshall Islands due to leave in a few weeks’ time.
Permanent Secretary for the Public Service, Mr. Parmesh Chand, said that the FVS would be providing much needed human resource capacity to these various agencies, while simultaneously up skilling the volunteers and providing them with valuable work experience. Mr. Chand said that it was encouraging to see the enormous potential of the FVS and the positive contributions of the volunteers to the lives of ordinary members of the public.
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