Papamoa's Vanuatu rebuilders

An organised team of volunteers from Papamoa have returned from Vanuatu after last week accomplishing four post-cyclone construction projects in five days.

The team of 32 completed $50,000 worth of projects, including a concrete block home for a family whose tin shack was blown away in the cyclone and community toilets for a village of 200.


The volunteers in front of a completed house. Picture: Diana Judge.

They also finished the conversion of a shipping container donated by Sunrise Rotary in Tauranga to a medical aid station and the conversion of a second container into another home.

The second container shipped $18,000 worth of donated wood from Bunnings for Cyclone Pam projects.

'The team also included three medical staff - a geriatrician, a paediatrician and a theatre nurse who saw 100 patients in one day at our pop-up medical clinic,” says expedition organiser Diana Judge.

'Some of these patients were referred to the hospital and a local medical clinic for further treatment.”

She says 72kgs of donated medical supplies were also delivered to the community, local ambulance service and hospital, and 20 boxes of clothing, donated by TOWER staff here in NZ, were distributed throughout the local village.

Three of the projects were found by Kerri Tilby-Price for Break Free Expeditions while she was waiting for news of her daughter Courtney after Cyclone Pam devastated the country in March.

Courtney was volunteer teaching at the time on the island of Pentecost.

The Break Free Cyclone Pam rebuild team comprised of Kiwis aged from six years to 76, and included five team members from Mount Maunganui and Papamoa.

'The teamwork was outstanding and I still can't believe we delivered four huge projects in just five days,” says Diana. 'The community and house recipients are ecstatic.”

The projects are all near Port Vila because of the relative ease of transportation compared with the outer islands.

'A lot of outlying islands have been devastated, but there has also been a lot of devastation around Port Vila as well,” she adds.

Break Free Expeditions is returning to Vanuatu in April with a school group to continue working with the same community. It is a New Zealand registered company run as a not-for-profit organisation.

Expeditioners pay their own costs, including airfares and accommodation as well as a contribution to the building materials. They stay in three star accommodation, says Diana.

'The reason we do that is so it's like having a holiday with a purpose,” she explains.

'They come back to a nice shower, a flushing toilet and a warm bed and we are not a liability on the community that we are serving.”

It also helps with health and safety, and the company's repeat business.

'We also get a lot of repeat volunteers who come back because they have such a wonderful experience,” says Diana.

'Whereas if you have been sleeping on a mud floor with ants and spiders and all sorts of things, then you have to be quite hardy to want to go back and do that again.

'Basically it opens up the opportunity for people who would never do this sort of thing. Because they know that they will have a flushing toilet, a shower and a bed at the end of the day, they are okay.”

The company has been operating for seven years in nine different countries building houses, school classrooms, toilets and other infrastructure.

For more information on Break Free Expeditions, visit: http://breakfreeexpeditions.com/

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