Rotary NZ Tour for Eden's gardeners

‘School Farms of the South Pacific’ are focused on education, food self-sufficiency and water resource preservation.

The adventure began one year ago, at a School Farm in Tontouta, New Caledonia, where the Rotary Nouméa Ducos Boulari club met a small non-government organisation called Rassemblement des Actionnaires pour de Grands et Petits Projets (RAGPP). Their focus is the education of disadvantaged children and teenagers from the Melanesian community, either by getting them back in to school or by learning skills and a trade in one of the centres created by RAGPP, such as the School Farm.

So what is ‘A tour of New Zealand....alone on a bike!’?

Rotarian Pascal Temmar’s challenge is to make a solo tour of the length of New-Zealand on his bike, without organised assistance, mobilising the local population along the way.

Actually, to make this work, everybody’s support is needed. By adopting one or more kilometres, you’ll help in his journey. He’ll ride every adopted km, and all the funds raised are for the ‘School Farms’ project. So, go for it and support Pascal.

Why such a campaign?

The goal is to finance replicating the School Farm concept in the Northern province of New Caledonia, and then in the South Pacific islands as well. (Vanuatu, Solomons, Fiji, Tuvalu, Samoa, Tonga, Cook, French Polynesia), giving priority to those most threatened by climate change. The ultimate purpose of the ‘School Farms of the South Pacific’ project is to :

- Implement social reintegration programs for the local youths, by giving them professional skills as well as maintaining traditional bearings,

- Develop sustainable organic permaculture methods, targeting food self-sufficiency,

- Create new synergies between traditional know-how and modern technologies by training local trainers,

- Demonstrate to the local population how to produce more, while controlling the water consumption, as their water resources are under threat by the rise of the ocean level.