TWELVE-year-old Samoan student Lupeoaunu’u Va’ai won a Gold Medal award for her story ‘The Voice of an Island’ in the Voices of Future Generations Children’s Story Writing Competition last year.
Va’ai was in London last week for the launch of her book and as a Voices of Future Generations Child Author, she has committed to turning her book into a series, writing one story each year until 2020. It’s not every day that an aspiring author can say they have a published book and will be writing a series for the next five years and thgis is a dream come true for Va’ai. “I am so happy; I never ever thought that something like this would happen to me,” she said. Va’ai was 11 when she entered in the 2015 competition, which called for stories from child authors from across the globe, winning a Gold Medal Award for her story centred on a young girl named Katalina. The Voices of Future Generations Children’s Book Series is created in partnership with the United Nations and aims to share different voices from children around the world on the challenges they think they will face in the future and the solutions they feel are within their reach. This is in line with the implementation of the sustainable development goals and the Paris climate agreement in a way that realises the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Lupeoaunu’u Va’ai, known as Lupe, was one of two Pacific islanders awarded a gold medal from the Pacific islands. Tyra Sioni from Papua New Guinea was the other gold medallist. “I was so surprised to know that I had won a gold medal for my book! I wrote this story on what I have felt, thought and heard from the stories from my great-grandmother, it was easy for me to write as it came from my heart,” said Lupe. “I hope people like it, and that we can learn from it and help save our Samoa and our planet.” Lupe attends St Mary’s Primary School, and her favourite subjects include Maths, English, Social Studies and Basic Science. She loves learning about the environment and has established an environmental group in her school. This week, she is in London attending the Inter-generational Learning Circle on Inter-generational Equity, Children’s Rights and the Sustainable Development Goals hosted by the Voices of Future Generations (VoFG) and The Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice. The four-day event included the launching of an international partnership between VoFG and Bloomsbury Publishing, which will be publishing the child authors books and the launch of the books at The Houses of Parliament. Lupe will be launching her book as well as participating in panel and roundtable discussions, story sessions and an awards celebration evening. The third day will be a Child Artists and Authors Biodiversity Workshop at Cambridge University with a visit to The Living Rainforest and a circle of all beings workshop focusing on protection of animals on the last day. “I’m so excited and nervous about this, it’s my first time to travel for such a long time on a plane, and to go to London,” said Lupe. “I hope to make friends with children from different places and countries and learn about the different problems that other children my age experience and the ways they think we can fix them, it may be something that we can do also.” The Voice of an Island touches on the topics of climate change, biodiversity protection and education. Because of these links, Lupe will be speaking during the session on achieving the sustainable development goals on climate change, biodiversity, energy and innovation. She will be writing blogs on her journey – supported by Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, Samoan Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Samoa Stationery & Books and the Principal, Staff and Students of St. Mary’s School, Savalalo.
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