Dive Munda in the Solomon Islands have had an amazing end to a challenging year
A massive shoutout to all our International Youth Day campaign sponsors (you know who you are!), our ambassadors ( Miss c, Gladys Habu and soccer star, Raphael Lea’i) our partners, (Solomon Airlines, Agnes Gateway Hotel, Scuba Schools International and Tourism Solomons), our awesome Dive Munda staff and most importantly our Solomon Islands youth! Thank you for giving the gift of diving during this #covid19 year!
Dive Munda exceeded all expectations due to the overwhelming support of our sponsors! We received in total 95 sponsorships and have committed to train 105 youth before the end of 2020.Thus far, 80 youth from our local Magical Munda communities as well as Gizo, Malaita and Honiara were trained to become SSI Open Water divers by our Dive Munda local instructors, lead by @girlsthatscuba ambassador and the only active female dive instructor in the history of the Solomon Islands, Euna Zio. We aim to train 20 more youth before we welcome the new year. Stay tuned for more updates!
Further, Dive Munda is committed to continue to work with the amazing youth in 2021. We want to ensure the youth continues to dive and train, although we know it will be very hard for our youth to afford this, we will work with our sponsors, partners, ambassadors and guests to ensure our youth stays active in diving.
You can become involved or continue to sponsor or partner with us in 2021 as well! Simply pick the project and initiative below and let us know in what way you want to participate :-)
Some of the incredible initiatives we will embark upon in the new year (and we have already secured a few exciting partnerships):
- Work with our local certified girls to start off the Munda plastic recycling project, making arts and crafts for sale and also collecting rubbish and plastic. We will work with Plasticwise Solomon Islands on this project.
- We will work with all our local Munda certified youth to spearhead our coral restoration and rehabilitation program started last year with reefdivers.io We are starting a “volunteerism” program with visiting guests to partake in this initiative.
- We will embark upon monthly beach and underwater clean-up’s to give our youth more dive experience and also make a difference in our communities and in our ocean. We are an SSI Blue Oceans Centre.
- We will continue to develop and train our youth, in partnership with SSI, we will offer the awesome SSI Coral ID Ecology program at no cost to our youth
- We will work with the Coral Sea Foundation and the award winning Sea Woman of Melanesia project to further develop the young female certified divers to become community reef caretakers and custodians of our oceans, reef, sharks and fish!
- We want to empower our certified youth to become the spokespeople for the protection and care of our land creatures too, especially our local cats and dogs. Here we will continue to partner with Magical Munda Animal Health
- We are hoping to find more funds and partnerships in the new year to continue to train our youth take some of the shining youth stars up to dive professional level.
- Specifically we will focus on training females to become dive instructors as well as yoga teachers.
May we take this opportunity to wish you all happy holidays and best wishes for a new awesome normal in 2021! #weareallinthistogether
Photo Credit: Dive Munda, Allways Dive
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