BY LYNTON AARON FILIA
THE President of East West Centre in Hawaii arrived in Honiara last week to encourage progression of the Pacific Islands Leadership Programme in Solomon Islands.
EWC President PhD Richard R Vuylsteke arrived two days after PILP celebrated its first alumni in Honiara and community workshop last week, where more than 30 participants attended.
Mr Vuylsteke said he came to Solomon Islands is because it’s his job as president of EWC to make sure PILP have good staffing, monitoring and look for opportunities to run the training effectively to Pacific islanders including the Solomons.
He adds, coming to Solomon Islands as part of the PILP delegation is to support the sequence of PILP training which will see Taiwan and EWC work together and building up things really needed in various islands they deal with.
In addition, Vuylsteke said other reasons of coming here is because Solomon Islands is in his bucket list which he would like to visit.
Meanwhile, opportunities young generation of Solomon Islands needs to tap in is the PILP trainings which covered important topics ranging from community development, disaster management and education.
Young leaders also undergo trained in environmental protection, green energy, health care, indigenous culture, industry revitalisation, international cooperation, nongovernmental organisations and vocational training.
With such training opportunities, Vuylsteke said they are looking at increasing the use of social media and information technology (IT) connectivity.
“One interesting thing is, I will try to encourage progression of the programme and increasing use of social media and IT connectivity,” he said.
He said this will boost interaction and connectivity among PILP participants to communicate and doing projects in their home countries progressively and effectively.
“The idea of EWC is, if you going to address agricultural, health and urban problem, we need to work together not just in your home country but learn lesson from different places,” Vuylsteke said.
On Friday, the PILP participants visited the Taiwan Technical Mission farm at KGVI School.
They were introduced to three main projects run by Taiwan through TTM which comprise of crops, horticulture and piggery.
