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World First in Exotic Destinations ? South Pacific Island Resort Offered in Raffled

Right now people are looking for exotic and different destinations, on shoe string budgets.

Everything in the known world is crashing around their ears, with the stock market in the biggest bear market, for a very long time, with the ‘r’ word floating around. No-one can afford to be rash in their investments or spending. Every cent spent must count, as extra cash is in short supply.

There is however, one exotic destination that has something very special and still in everyone’s reach. It has some of the last untouched wilderness areas in the world. People still live in custom villages, the way their ancestors did hundreds of years ago. A place where you can breathe the fresh air and see the brightest stars in the tropical night sky. That place is Vanuatu, in the South Pacific.

The charity, YouMe Support Foundation in partnership with winaresort.com is raffling a boutique resort in the capital of the island nation, Port Vila, only three hours by plane from Sydney, Australia.

Funds from the raffle provide non-repayable education grants for geographically and financially underprivileged children. A return airfare and one week’s accommodation is included in the 1st prize.

Later this year someone will become the proud new owner of Seachange Lodge. With it goes a tax-free income. Retirement waiting on a South Pacific island.

The raffle will assist children who cannot help themselves. “Unless we get outside help, our students will never have a chance to go to high school,” Mr Harris Apos, the Banks Area Secretary in Vanuatu said. “They will never have the opportunity to live their dreams of being a school teacher, doctor, mechanic, carpenter, or nurse. They simply have to stay in the village on the remote island.”

The Prime Minister Mr Lini, admitted, “The government does little to assist these people,” when he visited the area recently. “Sometimes all that is needed is only $US500 to bring a classroom into use.”

One exercise book is shared between several pupils and pencils broken into three pieces to give them something to write with. Qualified teachers are in the minority and often it is the recently graduated primary students who assist the younger ones. Many parents cannot read or write.

In 2006, the nation of Vanuatu, made famous by A Michener’s ‘Tales of the South Pacific’, (and the film ‘South Pacific’) was voted the Happiest Country on Earth, by the British New Economics Foundation’s (NEF), Happy Planet Index.

“The Index was based on life expectancy and environmental footprint, to rank the countries”, according to Adrienne Wilson, writing for Gadling.com on July 15th 2006.

Yet the local schools are without resources of any kind. Most of the children will never leave their villages.

“We really appreciate our guests, who since 2004 have helped us to send desperately needed school supplies to these isolated areas,” said Richard Tendys, the current owner of Seachange Lodge. “For those of us who use the benefits of the 21st century without a thought, it is good to invest in some children who hardly know the technology, that can help them, even exists.”

Vanuatu has never become commercialized like some of its South Pacific neighbours and so has maintained it own unique blend as an exotic travel destination.

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