Project Leaders
Volunteer with Turtles and Community Development in Vanuatu

Kalo Robson - Project Staff

Kalo and his wife Juliet, along with their 4 daughters, have lived on Moso Island in the village of Tasiriki since it was established in 1993. In 2000 he was selected to represent the village as a member of the national Vanua-Tai (of land and sea) Natural Resource Monitors network. Over the last six years he has worked with his community on several natural resource conservation issues. One of the first projects was to ban the harvest of sea turtles and their eggs in the village. In 2003 a ban was also placed on the harvesting of giant clams. He has also worked with the community to monitor the marine conservation area that they have designated. Kalo has helped to supervise/organize the project within the community since it began in February 2006. He has now taken over the role of the project manager. Once you arrive at the project site you will see a lot of Kalo and he will be the person to go to with any questions that might come up.

Morten Pita & James Tamata - Project Staff

Village ‘Turtle Monitors’: MANY people in the village will be helping the volunteers over on the beach, on a rotating roster. It always takes the volunteers a while to get everyone’s name straight, so no need to be embarrassed if you forget a name. But to give you a start a couple of the most frequent helpers are:

Pita Morten is one of the youths in the village that began helping out with the project in 2006. While Morten might be the youngest member of the ‘turtle team’ he’s proven himself to be one of the best turtle trackers, finding nests up in the bush that others walk past. He is a little bit shy to start out but has always got a smile and a positive attitude. With that in mind it’s not surprising that he made a lot of new friends last year with the project volunteers.

Prior to GVI volunteers coming to Moso Kalo, the only community turtle monitor at the time, asked other members of the community if they would be interested in helping to monitor nesting turtles on the beach. Quite a few people helped once or twice but James Tamata found he really liked helping with the project. Before long he was helping out almost every night. By the time the first group of volunteers arrived James began taking turns to lead the group during their nightly work sessions on the beach. James is also a bit shy and soft spoken but he really got on well with the volunteers last year. Like everyone else working on the project he really enjoyed getting to know new people from other countries.

Bungalow Management and Cooking Staff As with the turtle monitors you will meet MANY of the ladies in the village when they come to cook or clean around the bungalows. In fact it will be someone different everyday. Sometimes the women can be a bit shy so this gives them a chance for one on one time with the volunteers.

Michelle Fletcher - Project Staff

Michelle is a Canadian CUSO volunteer working with the Vanua-Tai program out of Wan Smolbag. Having been heavily involved during the early years of the project she is mostly acting as a project advisor at this point while the community takes on the active management of the project. So you’ll probably see her during your first week on the project but she will not be spending too much time out on Moso.