Meaningful
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Action
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Transparent
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Education
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Support
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Meaningful 〰️ Action 〰️ Transparent 〰️ Education 〰️ Support 〰️
Welcome to mates: fiji! We connect those with, with those without to share usefulness, education and local community.
There is no cookie cutting here - we have the space to customize projects to unique skill sets and interests. Mates recognises that this increases:
Your passion to help a Fijian village
Overall positive outcomes for you and the community
This could be a nurse opening the clinic with Kelera the local nurse, teacher collecting USBs with lesson plans to give to the local principal Etika, joining in kids club - teaching your favourite games with the children to support parents, building water tank set ups to provide families with clean, safe drinking water, teaching swim lessons, chatting with whomever to improve their english and become your mate.
The limits are only our collective imagination and your willingness to become mates.
Support us
Let’s be mates!
Would you love to volunteer your time? We need people to help with:
Lending a hand at markets
Joining our fundraising committee
Social Media management
And we are open to all your ideas - just reach out!
FAQs
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a) A non for profit (working on getting our charity status as we speak!)
b) A cross-ocean-community
c) A travel business
d) all the above…
That’s right its (d)! Gosh you’re clever.
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Kudos to mum for the banging name! Full credit goes to her it was going to be something lame but she came to our rescue… what’s new. It stands for:
Meaningful
Action
Transparent
Education
Support
These are the key pillars of our NFP and we love acrostic poems…
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To begin with - they are the best. They are such a beautiful peoples and there is so much we can learn from their community values. Then there are some practical reasons: it is only a 4 hour flight from Sydney (where we are based), it is cheap to travel there and they have government systems which are conducive to a non-for-profit operating.
Also the political reasons - I (Hi, Charlie, The Founder here :) ) personally think it should be the responsibility of all Australians to support our Pacific Island neighbours. Heck, if we had it my way there would be passport free travel between us all.
So setting up mates in Fiji made all the sense in the world.
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Because we don’t like being told what to do. Ha! Whilst true it comes down to removing as many barriers for entry as possible for people to get involved.
If we only offer people the opportunity to come teach at a school…. there are plenty of people who simply won’t get involved because that’s not up their alley. Instead - offering a space where people can flex their creativity and ingenuity is much more appealing. No cookie cutting here.
In saying that we do have a long term goal to build a new community safe from rising sea levels. Even that - the ways people can be involved will be so varied!
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Because other options for volunteer tourism just don’t cut it…
We don’t want to force people into a specific box - we are more creative than that.
We have the time to give good support to volunteers when they are in Fiji. Noones getting chucked in the deep end here.
People love to travel.
It’s great for the Fijians English speaking practice. It’s beautiful.
People can bring over necessary supplies and resources from Australia where we have manufacturing and shipping isn’t ridiculously expensive.
For example: We want a rugby team to book a week with mates for their end of season trip. Fundraise throughout the season, collect second hand boots at training, get excited, build community and then come over to Fiji with their loot! Boots in Fiji are double the cost as they are here and average wages per week are about 1/3 the cost of the pair of boots…. So we bring a 7kg backpack each on the plane and buy 40kgs of bags and stack them with boots. Every Fijian boy get his ULTIMATE wish in life. Then the Aussies learn what real rugby looks like, make friends, share stories, laugh a lot and have a great holiday.
We figure empathy isn’t limited so why would we make our options?
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No hurry no worry! Take your time to look through the website. Send us an email and we can work together to find a way you can get involved.
If you’d like to donate to mates in general because you don’t mind where the money is used because it all looks so fabulous… (oh my goodness, stop you’re making me blush) click here for the general go fund me.
