Latest Update 5th July: 

46 lanterns have been donated by the Belmont High School Eco Tour Group who travelled to Taveuni with Island Spirit on 23rd June 2013 and stayed until 5th July. Read more about their eco-adventure here:

• 36 to Waibulu village on Qamea
• 10 to Vidawa village in Bouma National Heritage Park, Taveuni.

21 May: 

Four boxes of 12 lanterns have been ordered, ready to distribute during the June group. We are in the process of organising the distribution of solar lanterns to as many villages as we can. We are pleased to announce that the first of our efforts will be in June 2013, when a school trip from Melbourne will hand out lanterns that the 75% profit from their trip will fund.

This has been on the agenda for a while but has been moved up the priority list. Read this story to find out why:

A small boy from Qamea had first degree burns over his whole body after trying to fill his family’s kerosene lamp up. It exploded in his face and he had to be transported to the local island doctor, then onto hospital on another island (if any of you have been burned you’ll know the pain he was in during the entire time it took him to get to hospital – we think around five hours).

I don’t think the locals knew that he needed to be put in cold water and covered in cling film immediately as I heard that an elder was with him in the boat who possessed ‘cooling powers’. He eventually got to the hospital on Taveuni and then transferred to Labasa where he was on oxygen for four days before he died.

This little boy didn’t have to die.