Each village on Rarotonga did a fantastic job but there were just those few who definitely stood out and impressed the Vaka Pride Judges.

With Round #2 of Vaka Pride Competition commencing from November 2016 – February 2017 there are more opportunities to improve and win funding towards your next community initiative. Round 2 and 2nd judging is scheduled to take place in February 2017. This is just around the corner but still enough time for your village representatives to get your communities behind this great initiative and go into the draw to win funding towards a community project of your choice.

As you may already know there has been changes made to the Vaka Pride Competition. Instead of judging the 3 main Vaka’s on Rarotonga it has been split into judging all 10 villages on Rarotonga.

The original Vaka Pride committee was made up of representatives from the Cook Islands Police Department, Ministry of Health, Internal Affairs, National Environment Service and Cook Islands Tourism Corporation. New additions to the committee include representatives from the Ministry of Cultural Development, the Office of the Prime Minister, and the Cook Islands National Council of Women. The new committee members judging contributions as well as the new judging elements will commence during this round of judging set for February 2017.

There has also been new judging elements added to each category such as, ‘Renewable Energy or Sustainable living’ has been added to the Akono I te Ao Rangi category, ‘Community initiatives’ has been added to Tupuranga Tangata and ‘Best voted agricultural production’ has been added to Peu Maori.

Meitaki Maata to each village for your continuous efforts in helping to keep our little paradise clean, green and beautiful. We wish you the best of luck for Round #2, and look forward to seeing the results.