The "Hauhaulele" va'a club has a section open to young women who want to get in shape through physical activity. This weekend they also benefited from a culinary workshop with a dietician to improve their daily diet.

The SPC Pacific NCD Youth Ambassadors programme was launched to support creative activities led by young people to raise awareness on prevention and control of NCDs - Not only for young people, but for their whole community.

For the third consecutive year, young people from different Pacific island states and territories have the opportunity to spread prevention and control messages for noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) using different media, thanks to the Wake Up! Project, launched in 2017, with financial support from the Pacific Fund (France) and the Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), and implemented by the Pacific Community (SPC).

Every year since 2017, with the financial support of the French Pacific Fund and the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT),the Pacific Community (SPC) has hosted Pacific youth to take part in the “Wake Up!” project.

Have you ever seen these murals? If you are from Suva (Fiji), Nuku’alofa (Tonga), Port-Vila (Vanuatu) or Mata Utu (Wallis and Futuna), you might surely have noticed them.

The Pacific Youth have a message for you.

They want you to be concerned about the threats of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

SPC recently completed a training programme designed to build capacity of health professionals from the French-speaking Pacific Island countries and territories (New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, French Polynesia and Vanuatu). The programme consisted of four modules designed to improve participants’ skills in managing health promotion projects that target non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

The goal of the Wake up! project is to get younger generations involved in efforts to control non-communicable diseases (NCDs) by providing them with an opportunity to speak out on this topic through the media and the arts.

Following the project’s initial success in 2017, the Pacific Community (SPC), in partnership with the regional United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) office, decided to do it again in 2018.

Nutrition education session conducted in one of the schools in Wallis

Fiji National University (FNU) and the Pacific Community (SPC) has jointly developed a project called “Healthy Child Promising Future – Promoting health in primary school settings” targeting primary school children aged 7 to 9 living in Fiji and Wallis and Futuna, which was submitted by FNU for French Pacific Fund 2017.

To stem the non-communicable diseases (NCD) crisis in Wallis and Futuna, community leaders have committed to declare public community areas smoke-free and to cultivate gardens to promote consumption of healthy local foods.

They will also exclude sugar-sweetened beverages and alcohol from community gatherings.

These are among the outcomes of the first-ever joint mission to Wallis and Futuna by the Pacific Community (SPC) and World Health Organisation (WHO), to support the national Health Agency in its efforts to scale-up action on NCDs.