Keeping it clean in the South Pacific

Sanitation and hygiene is a huge concern in the South Pacific – which is why helping rural residents in Fiji and Vanuatu was a primary focus of our recent efforts there. 

Field Ready has installed 20 latrines in the Fijian village of Soa to help prevent the spread of typhoid and other diseases and improve the village’s sanitation. Working with the country's Ministry of Health and Medical Services (MOHMS) and UNICEF, we delivered the latrines in late June, helped install them and gave them to the Turaga ni Koro-Wame Ratadai of Soa Village.

The latrines will serve 20 Soan families, numbering about 119 people.

In addition to improving sanitation, the latrines are cheaper, quicker to install and easier to clean than the cement toilets they replaced. Soa was also the first village in Fiji to receive the newest, improved latrine after we made design adjustments based on feedback from earlier installations in Naitasiri.

The project has been so successful that Fiji MOHMS ordered an additional 1,000 latrines from us to distribute to areas of need; these are now being manufactured.

Back to school

Our efforts to improve sanitation shifted to helping students and teachers in August, when we installed 25 portable handwashing stations at rural Kindergartens in Vanuatu. We distributed two portable handwashing stations to schools in Balon, tone in Kole, two in Nabahuk, five in Stonehill, six in Turtle Bay and nine in Tutuba. The distribution was the result of a handwashing station demonstration Field Ready staff gave earlier this year in front of 263 kindergarten and primary school teachers to show the stations’ benefits. 

“We’re very lucky that when the COVID-19 pandemic hit we had already been able to show people the handwashing stations and then boost the schools’ capabilities when it came to hygiene with these distributions,” said Luke Johnston, Field Ready’s Pacific regional lead. 

One portable handwashing station was also donated to the Vanatuvui Kindergarten in the Sarete community on Vanuatu’s Espiritu Santo island. The handwashing station provides a welcome sanitation boost after the community’s infrastructure suffered great losses in April’s severe Tropical Cyclone Harold, noted Mayumi Green of Big Heart Island Vanuatu. 

“Our Kindy was destroyed by TC Harold; it’s now temporarily repaired but this handwashing station is a big help,” Green said. 

In total, we delivered 90 portable handwashing stations by the end of August to other Vanuatu communities affected by the storm.

New partners

Field Ready’s response to TC Harold brought us together with the Korean International Cooperation Agency. During intra-agency meetings to discuss WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) needs in Fiji after Harold decimated island nations this spring, KOICA representatives were so impressed with our programs they asked to partner with us to help get more sanitation to rural Fiji communities. 

As a result, with funding from KOICA we produced another 15 portable handwashing stations, 150 foot-operated taps and 300 water buckets in our Suva workshop or with local manufacturing partners. The items are designed to help ease WASH service delivery in areas that are either far from water, lack infrastructure or are affected by a disaster such as a cyclone or earthquake.

The items were delivered during a late-August demonstration attended by Korean Ambassador to Fiji Cho Shin-hee and Fiji Minister of Health and Medical Services Ifereimi Waqainabete, M.D. All of the items will be distributed to communities in need, officials said.