There are three ways to participate in The Nakavika Project:
Join the Dialogue
The most important aspect of our trip was the exchange. While we soaked in the ambiance, the traditions, and the friendships of Fiji, we tried to impart our own creative learning techniques, our innovation, our traditions, and more to the community members interested in learning.
Important Point: When it comes to volunteering and bringing something new to an underprivileged community, with it comes a slew of moral and situational issues that can theoretically be debated forever. Instead if trying to determine who really is right – the foreigner who brings and shows and contributes or the one who leaves them be as they are – if good intentions and awareness are involved in the equation, the interaction becomes solely about the act of challenging the other.
Become a part of the dialogue. Read our stories, and comment on our approach to voluntourism. Bring up the big issues, the ballsy points, and help us all expand our own minds. Click our logo below to read the stories now!
Contribute Your Own Experience
Have you created a volunteer project, participated in a voluntouristic endeavor, or want to share personal experiences pertaining to this topic of a “dialogue?” We would love to provide you a venue for your stories.
Contribute a similar story of your experiences or your reactions to people “trying to help people” by contact Lindsay and Garrett, and we’ll publish your story on our blog! Click our logo below to send us a message right now!
Create Your Own Dialogue
We went to Nakavika with the intent of starting a volunteer-based project we could run remotely from home. When we realize, based on cultural differences and many other obstacles, it wasn’t in our realistic power to do so, we had to adjust our plan of action.
Instead of clearly dictating a program for accepted volunteers according to our own objectives, we are now opening up the possibility for dedicated individuals to try out their own projects in Nakavika where they take the reigns and control the experience themselves.
Our roles as project founders will be:
- To protect the interests of the village by screening the hopeful participants to establish dedication and good intentions
- To guide, but not dictate, the objectives of the participant’s project, using our knowledge of Fijian culture
- To communicate to the participant basic guidelines, traditions, behavioral rules, and cultural preparedness
- To contact the village and discuss the proposed program, following proper Fijian hierarchy, and request permission and an invitation for the participant’s project
- To hook that participant up with details on how to get to Nakavika and contacts.
Basically, if you’d like to travel to Nakavika and implement your own project in the community, we will help you with your pursuit. As the participant, you can decide what means to what end. You are the one to negotiate with the Turaga ni Koro over bowls of kava. You sleep inside a brilliant green caldera and becoming a part of a close-knit community.
Important Point: It is our strong recommendation that the duration of your project is two weeks. Anything less is not enough, and anything more presents a slew of difficulties, which you can read about in our stories.
What’s the first step: Apply to be a TNP Leader
