Having reached out to 250 farmers and 1,250 members of the wider community, knowledge sharing has been maximised providing the community with the necessary technical capacities to continue striving for an environmentall friendly sustainable livelihood.

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Not discussed.

Speaking directly with family matais and meeting with the Pulenu?u and village council to enhance essential ?buy in? to the project. This approach has slowed down the engagement and implementation phase, however WIDBI is committed to continuing this process as the benefits from the Tafua experience are encouraging and positive. Reviewing the project approach resulted in a more robust process that will now extend on-going outreach with families and support from WIBDI to address technical waste management improvements. Along with that, workshops were carried out in Samoan to ensure the necessary information reached all community members.

The approach to target individual families, through our Unique Site Visit program, became a priority task ? rather than beginning with a whole of village action. Discussions with over 100 families, from around Savai?i, identified key current practices that were damaging and degrading to the environment ? in particular the burning of green waste and plastics/ foils/ styrofoam, ink papers etc. being left to decompose around the fales and adjoining plantations. Initially our strategy had been to target whole of village clean ups in an urgent and prioritised manner, but it was recognised that unless we spent more time with families the overall village clean up would not achieve long term practice change. The objectives of the project to enhance organic literacy principles with families on Savai?i were adjusted to meet the complex layers of individual and village pathways required for long-term support ? e.g. Speaking directly with family matais and meeting with the Pulenu?u and village council to enhance essential ?buy in? to the project. This ensured participation from the youth which provides the base from which the project in Tafua can be maintained.

The pilot village, Tafua, is a certified organic village which must adhere to the National Association of Sustainable Agriculture Australia (NASAA) standards, which has been incorporated into local policy. The pilot study reinforces what is already there through upscaling practices and reating a better educated community on how to reduce land contamination. A practical waste management strategy, with an emphasis on staged village engagement was developed, guided by the WIBDI Culture and Protocol Specialist. Targeting families at the individual, extended and village scales over time has encouraged various means of engagement, learning, development and practice change to be supported and achieved. It was identified early on in the project that a strong emphasis on awareness of the impact of poor waste management practices would require a significant amount of focus if any longer term attitudinal and behavioural change was to be achieved.

The pilot waste management scheme carried out in Tafua provides an easily replicable and holistic approach to improving organic literacy through minimising waste within rural communities in Samoa. Having learnt lessons of implementation and best practices and having interest from other certified organic villages in Savai?i, upscaling is very possible and may be fundamental in ensuring more communities take ownership of their development in sustainable and environmentally friendly manners.

The village requires a greater understanding of waste management practices, which will be provided in the form of educational workshops and house visits, carried out by WIBDI and their partners.

This project aims to actively involve women in waste management and give them a sense of ownership of the project.

WIBDI carry out their own montiroing and evaluation process to ensure the disired outputs are being achieved. The main result of this project is to develop a ?pilot? waste management strategy (Tafua Village) to reduce land contamination within plantations and community areas through establishing a collaborative partnership with five certified organic village districts on Savai?i.

WIBDI have both a facebook page and youtube account where project status and news is regularly posted to keep the communnity and those interestedinformed. They also often attend conferences where they are asked to speak about their work, occassionally using Tafua as a case study to educate the wider Samoan community.