Marine Jourdren talks about her VEPA Experience....

My experience with VEPA was too short, but fruitful.  Lots of very interesting projects  are being run currently, but I guess I just showed up at the wrong moment! Indeed, not only that the majority of the board members were away at that moment, but also that the attribution of an important subvention was refused, and that  braked the momentum of the water project when I arrived.

However, it was really great to work with Ane, VEPA’s part-time employee. She showed and explained to me what they were working on about the rubbish treatment, it was interesting to work with her and she’s such a nice person. I realized what a big challenge it is to raise awareness and try to implement a rubbish treatment system there. But more and more schools seem to be implicated, so that’s a very good hope for the next years when these generations will grow up.

Thanks to Karen, I went diving to do a reef survey under VEPA’s flag. With my buddy we stayed apart from the tourist divers group, and obviously we missed a shark and a turtle! Anyway, it was already amazing for me to dive there, as it was my first dive on a reef. I was literally fascniated by all the fishes that I saw there although they are supposed to be very common! The data we collected was to be sent on a specific website that aims to collect such information.

With Ane, we worked together to reorganize the website a bit, to make the information accessible more easily and more obvious. I had more knowledge about the website stuff, and she had more knowledge about the organization, so all in all we made a good combination!

It’s not the first time that I worked with an environmental organization, however it’s always frustrating to see that there often a problem of means even if there  is so much will. So hopefully they will find the funds to go on with their projects, as they could be really good impact for the whole community in Vava’u if successful. And successful they will be for sure!


Many thanks to Marine for joining the team for a short period, we look forward to keeping in touch and wishing her every success for the future.


Malo Marine