BY JARED KOLI
The Ngossi Valley Community in west Honiara yesterday held a flag raising ceremony to honour the country’s 43rd Independence Anniversary with the theme, ‘One people, One nation’.
The event includes a colourful parade of the national colours, singing of the National Anthem, and other activities such as sport during the day, motivational talk and dinner on the evening followed by cultural dances and history talk later in the night.
Speaking during the event yesterday morning, Chair of the Ngossi Valley Community organising committee Willie Atu said the spirit of Solomon Islands as a country brought them together to celebrate and honour the significant day yesterday.
Following the raising of the national flag, Mr Atu said the national flag shows the dignity, pride and respect Solomon Islanders must have for their country.
“Solomon Islands is a country of about 800,000 people whose life and economy depend on sea and land. This is an opportunity for us to look into our lives as well and sacrifice.
“Although our country has different provinces, we unite as one country Solomon Islands. Unity makes the country stronger even though we have diverse race of Melanesians, Micronesians and Polynesians,” Atu said.
Drawing from the National Anthem, Atu encourages community members to always put God first in their families and households, they will have joy, peace, progress and prosperity in their lives.
Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Provincial Government Stanley Pirione who is also part of Ngossi Valley community emphasised working together to make Ngossi community become a model community in Honiara.
“Today we come together as one community and reflect the loyalty and commitment we have towards our goals and aspiration as a community.
“One thing I want to emphasise is to uphold working together to make our community to become one of the model community in Honiara as well as in Solomon Islands.
“We have community members from the far east to the far west, and I want to emphasize for us to keep on working together on the things that we want to archive,” he said.
Mr Pirione thanked the working committee on organising yesterday’s event.
“Moving forward, the challenge is in us. The message to our kids, you are our future leaders, we want you not to do things that will hate our leaders on our community or things that bring shame in our community.
“We must maintain that spirit of cooperation and togetherness that has been going over these years. So our theme is very important, let’s work together for the betterment for our community,” he said.
