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I am currently in my second month of volunteering with VSA (Volunteer Services Abroad) at MORDI (Mainstreaming of Rural Development innovation). Our congruent goal is poverty alleviation, food security and climate resilience for the locals here in Tonga.  MORDI is a community-based NGO, using a participatory approach to help empower development governed by each community. Thousands of research surveys are conducted to see how each community wishes to develop, whether it be through water purification schemes, infrastructural or agricultural projects. In the Agricultural department, MORDI provides the plant materials and educates the farmers how to grow prosperous, nutritious and climate resilient food. Every community varies by number, land size, education, crop selection, which generally ascertains their goal to either subsistence farm or commercialize. My role is to facilitate the educators in how to grow and manage plants for distribution to the communities. I h
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A day in the life of a Tongan  Toot toot, the horn roars from outside my paper thin walls of a house. Time to go, I grad my bag with the essentials - lunch, water and insect repellent. Sometimes it’s like walking into a war field, a million mosquitoes to four limbs and an unbitten face. I jump into the car and we head on our way, today I am Doctor L J, a doctor of plants for farmers in the Northern west of the Tongatapu Island. I breathe in, with the freshness of the island stirs in the dancing sulphur of the sea and ashes of traditional farming. It’s hard to maintain my excitement with the upbeat music of the truck, especially when we fly along at a speed of 40km/hour.  The life here is said to be slow, but the slow I have adapted is now my normal. I can’t imagine going 60km/hour, I might vomit from speed sickness. We pass churches on every corner, they’re the nicest buildings in Tonga, a convoluted economic system I am sure not to understand.  Kids packed onto the b
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Malo e lelei! My name is LJ Pritchard, and I am a working as a volunteer in Tonga. I volunteer for VSA (Volunteer Services Abroad) working for a partnered organisation called MORDI (Mainstreaming of Rural Development Innovation).  Here in Tonga I am working on a sustainable rural development project that strides toward tackling the country’s biggest issues by contributing to poverty alleviation, economic growth and climate action. My role in the project is to provide technical knowledge in horticulture to strengthen and empower of smallholder farmers toward sustainable food production and environmental resilience. 
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