In November last year the Niue Ministry of Education announced that the island was pulling out of the scheme because the ongoing costs of maintaining the laptops and the satellite link were too great a burden. Four years ago, Niue was the first country in the world where every child of school age was provided with a laptop.

OLPC regional director Michael Hutak says Niue is now back on board.

In November, when Lisimoni Togahai the acting director of education said the scheme was to be phased out, she said the programme had gone very well, with children’s computer literacy and understanding of issues such as climate change improving. Her only concerns were budgetary.

Stretching time: athletes warm-up before a NAA fun-run

Former NAA president TaniRose Fakaotimanava-Lui says Internet Niue made an invaluable contribution to the Niue Athletics Association during her term as president from 2007-2011. The current president is Roz Tafatu-Hipa.

“Without Internet Niue’s help, NAA wouldn’t have been able to attend some of the Oceania meets where Niue athletes won historic medals,” says TaniRose.

This success continued in 2011. Michael Jackson Jnr attended the Oceania Athletics High Performance Training Centre in Samoa before the 2011 Oceania Regional Championships, before going on to win the under-20 javelin.

JinNam Hopotoa, one of NAA’s development athletes since 2007, won bronze in the open men’s discus at the 2011 Oceania regionals in Samoa at 15 yrs of age  ̵  the first medal won for Niue in an international field event.

Michael Jackson was funded by the Government of Niue and JinNam Hopotoa by Internet Niue. Internet Niue also funded all the NAA trophies and medals for the 2^nd National Athletics Meet in July 2011.

The main purpose of the Internet Niue’s support for athletics has been to communicate an important message. That while the internet offers huge benefits to the people of Niue, it is still important to lead a balanced life style which includes regular exercise.

“The NAA has been very successful in getting all villages and young and the old involved in athletics. I take my hat off to them,” says Per Darnell, president of The IUSN Foundation that funds Internet Niue.

In the first National Athletics Meet, all 13 villages were represented along with more than 700 registered participants. Including spectators, 90% of the population of Niue was present on the day.

During the 2011 Oceania Congress the NAA established strong connections with Athletics New Zealand, which has since provided assistance with resources and training for the NAA. Coaching director Michael Sharapoff convened a running, jumping and throwing workshop for primary school teachers in Niue and Athletics NZ coaches now assist NAA athletes based in New Zealand.

Following the Canterbury earthquakes, the NAA showed its appreciation to Athletics New Zealand by holding a fundraising walk to assist with the costs of rebuilding the Christchurch Athletics Track.

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Born in the village of Liku, Niue, he immigrated to New Zealand at the age of two in 1964, only returning to the island in 1991. Since then he has made a number of trips to Niue, developing his interest in the history and mythology of Niue.

His early work of the 1990’s (which should include his novel The Shark That Ate the Sun) showed him developing ways of understanding his environment, heritage and history, according to a review by John Daly-Peoples published in the National Business Review.

The exhibition begins at this point with some of his simple, direct pieces which were influenced by looking at traditional hiapo, a cloth beaten out of mulberry bark, felted into rectangular sheets and then painted freehand within a grid-like pattern.

Among these early works are Mafola (1991) in which we can see many of the images he would continue to use; the figurative elements which often refer to Christian stories, Niuean patterns, abstracted natural images of plants and fish, obscure narratives and European art. There are even images which will take on the cloud formations of his later work and his intentional scrambling or blurring of images is also there.

Other early works such as the Pulenoa Triptych (1995) included images which were essentially metaphors that combined the threads of the artist’s personal life, the history and mythology of Niue as well as the impact of Christianity on Niueans both there and in New Zealand.

In the last 20 years Pule has created his own set of geometric motifs and figurative elements. Some of them come from the Niuean hiapo, some from other Pacific traditions while others are from European and Maori sources. With all of them he has made adaptations and transformations in much the way that many contemporary artists appropriate other works of art. In the end however, they are all filtered through the artist’s own imagination.

The exhibition also includes several of his works where he used his poetry. These are political works, written in both English and the Niuean language, allowing him to further express his ideas.

The set of lithographs Restless Spirit (2000) with texts from The Shark That Ate the Sun is like mediaeval illustrated manuscripts combining words and illustrations. These works read like a cross between a set biblical quotations and private diary entries.

Published in association with the survey exhibition of the artist’s work  the book, Hauaga: The Art of John Pule published by Otago University Press, provides an indispensable guide to Pule’s work. It is the first book to deal with his art and ranges over his drawing, print-making and writing – he is the author of two novels and several volumes of poetry – as well as his painting.

Essays by Gregory O’Brien, Peter Brunt, and Nicholas Thomas provide several routes into Pule’s engaging and compelling works, considering his formation as a writer and artist, his meditations on life and loss, and the extraordinary architecture of his visual art.

John Pule speaks himself, through an extended interview, and in a series of extracts from his poetry and prose.

Source: National Business Review. To read the full story, click here.

The Association, which has over 100 member stations with more than 10,000 members worldwide, deemed Niue a safe and enjoyable stop for cruises. While anchored at Alofi port, most yachties catch up on their email by logging into the Internet Niue WiFi network.

In a Radio New Zealand International report, Niue commodore Keith Vial said it really comes down to the club providing the onshore facilities and looking after the crews while they’re on the island.

“We have got quite a sophisticated website and one of the big plusses is that any incoming crews and captains can email ahead, to find out, using our single side band radio, to find out some of the information they need to know. Waypoints and GPS locations, all those things. Which is almost a world first apparently.”

Keith Vial says last year around 240 yachts with more than 600 crew visited Niue.

Emani with Google's Vint Cerf, one of the founders of the internet, at the ISIF award ceremony in Nairobi

Award-winning internet operator Emani Fakaotimanava-Lui says the internet can play an important part in keeping the Niue language alive.

Mr Fakaotimanava-Lui has just returned to Niue from the Internet Governance Forum in Nairobi, Kenya, where he was presented with an international award on behalf of Internet Niue for its innovative work building Niue’s WiFi internet [see footnote].

“At one time, English was the language of the internet. But in recent years there has been an explosion in the use of other languages and scripts, most notably Mandarin,” he says.

“More people are now realising that we can do the same for endangered languages. The Niue language – Vagahau Niue – will survive only if it is in everyday use. And this means on the internet.”

There are probably 25,000 people of Niue descent on the planet, but only 1200 live permanently on Niue.

“Most people from Niue speak excellent English and this has enabled them to get jobs in New Zealand and elsewhere. But this doesn’t mean they need to lose their connection with their mother tongue,” says Mr Fakaotimanava-Lui.

“Language is the key to a culture. Lose it and you lose part of the essence of who you are.”

Mr Fakaotimanava-Lui says Vagahau Niue users could use macrons in much the same way as has been done for the Maori language. The next step would be to provide Vagahau Niue options for major internet browsers like Google and Firefox.

2011 ISIF Award winners (from left): Virak Ou, Cambodia; Meenakshi Gautham, India; Guilherme Soares, Timor Leste; and Niue’s Emani Fakaotimanava-Lui

Another potential role for the internet could be to give residents access to much larger and better resourced libraries than Niue could ever afford to have.

“There are online libraries covering almost every subject area and at all levels, but few of us are aware that they exist. In Nairobi I was given contacts that I will pass on to the local library and schools, so they can partner with these libraries to secure quality content that can be passed on to the Niue community.”

As a representative of Niue in an international forum, Mr Fakaotimanava-Lui said most other delegates didn’t know of the existence of Niue and had little awareness or of other countries in the Pacific.

“This was a bit distressing,” he says. “It would have been ideal to have a Pacific booth at the forum, raising awareness of about the Pacific in general as well as our individual countries.

“It’s time for all Pacific Islands to work together internationally to promote our products and services and to build a better understanding of the challenges we face. We certainly can’t afford to do it alone.”

About the ISIF award

The award won by Internet Niue was one of four award categories funded by the Asia Information Society Innovation Fund (Asia ISIF).

The fund is a joint initiative of the Canadian International Development Research Centre, the Internet Society and the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), with sponsorship from DotAsia.

For the 2011 awards, the fund received 46 award nominations for the four categories from 17 economies in the Asia Pacific. The $A7500 grants associated with the awards are for internet projects that benefit users and communities in Asia and the Pacific.

The category won by Internet Niue recognises its success over the last three years building local internet capacity and encouraging qualified locals to support the Niue internet community with a reliable locally-provided service.

Internet Niue is operated by RockET Systems, a private Niue company owned by Emani and TaniRose Fakaotimanava-Lui. Internet Niue is funded by the US-based IUSN Foundation from the sale of .nu domain names, mainly in Sweden.

Emani Fakaotimanava-Lui, managing director of RockET Systems, the company that manages the service, will travel to Kenya in late September to collect the prize and a development grant of $A7500.

The trophy that Emani will be bringing home

“This is a real thrill. The grant will also come in handy – enabling us to further improve WiFi access for our customers,” Mr Fakaotimanava-Lui says.

“This award recognises our team for their hard work and the creative and innovative solutions they come up with. Niue may be a small island with a small population, but it is a real challenge providing our people with a reliable internet service. Every day we have to overcome issues arising from a tropical climate, saltwater corrosion, the rugged terrain, dense vegetation and an unreliable power supply.”

He says the award also recognises the ongoing financial and technical support of The IUSN Foundation that funds Internet Niue from sales of .nu domain names, mainly in Sweden.

Internet Niue provides its services free to the government and people of Niue. Customers pay only for the cost of a connection, which can be as low as $NZ25. As a result, the reach of the internet on Niue is understood to be the highest in the South Pacific, with about 90 per cent of the population having access at home and/or at work.

Internet Niue’s award is for one of four award categories funded by the Information Society Innovation Fund (ISIF) – a joint initiative of the Canadian International Development Research Centre, the Internet Society and the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC). DotAsia provides sponsorship.

The fund received 46 award nominations for the four categories from 17 economies in the Asia Pacific.

The grants associated with the awards are for internet projects that benefit users and communities in Asia and the Pacific. The category won by Internet Niue recognises its success over the last three years building local internet capacity and encouraging qualified locals to support the Niue internet community with a reliable locally-provided service.

In 2008, The IUSN Foundation committed itself to the roll-out of its WiFi service to all villages on the island. Local company RockET Systems was contracted as the service provider. This followed the confirmation of the Foundation’s status as trustee of the .nu domain by the international internet regulator ICANN.

In the three years since, the Foundation has invested $NZ1.47 million in Internet Niue – bringing its total investment on the island since 1999 to $NZ 4.1 million. The internet now reaches all except two small villages and is supported by a second satellite dish, installed early this year.

The development of Internet Niue has enabled the people of Niue – arguably the most isolated nation on the planet – to connect with and participate in the outside world. It also enables the 20,000-plus Niuean diaspora to keep in contact with their home culture, their families and friends.

“The internet is particularly important for the development of tourism on Niue,” Mr Fakaotimanava-Lui says. “Visitors come here to get away from it all, but they still want to be connected to the web.”

The award will be presented to Mr Fakaotimanava-Lui at the Internet Governance Forum being held in Nairobi, Kenya from 27 to 30 September 2011. The forum  ̵  a United Nations initiative  ̵  brings governments, private companies, non-government organisations and internet managers together to discuss internet-related issues.

Mr Fakaotimanava-Lui will be able to observe and participate in the forum itself.

To read the ISIF media statement, click here.  To see the ISIF video about the four successful awards, click here.

Noni fruit growing at the Vaiea noni farm

In mid-2011 a group of Chinese businesspeople from New Zealand made arrangements to take large quantities of noni juice from Niue, the Cook Islands and Samoa.

The Vaiea farm, a joint venture between the Reef Group and the Government of Niue, was officially opened in October 2004. Its processing plant – described by the business owners as the most technologically advanced in the Southern Pacific – is capable of producing 100,000 litres of juice a month. Fruit from the farm is supplement by fruit gathered from Niue’s native forests.

Noni (Morinda citrifolia) is an evergreen bush grown mainly in the islands of the South Pacific Islands and Southeast Asia. Its white fragrant flowers bloom out of cluster-like pods, which bear the noni fruit. The fruit, which resembles a small bread fruit, is fleshy and gel-like when ripe.

The juice is extracted when the fruit is almost ripe. It taste and smell are not pleasant but its health promoting properties have been recognised as a natural remedy in Polynesia for thousands of years. Its main attribute is its proven ability to boost the body’s immune system.

The main active ingredient in noni is proxeronine, which is converted by the body in to xeronine. Xeronine is a critical biochemical compound involved in a wide range of normal biochemical reactions of the human body.

The manager of the farm, Mike Doherty, says it’ll take about four years for the trees on the additional 60 ha to reach full production. Developing the farm will be a major exercise involving the use of bulldozers, because Niue’s soil is thin and is interspersed with coral outcrops.

For more information about noni juice and how to buy it, click here.

Sources:  Radio NZ International and Pure Pacifika

The Foundation was named as a laureate in the digital access category of Computerworld’s 2011 Honours Programme at a gala awards evening held last month in Washington, D.C.

“We are not only honoured but thrilled to be named as a laureate for 2011,” says Per Darnell, president of The IUSN Foundation. “We believe access to the internet is a human right and it is our continued goal to extend our work to enable internet access to other emerging nations in the future as we have done successfully for Niue.”

IUSN founder Bill Semich was presented with a medallion inscribed with the programme’s mission, “A Search for New Heroes,” at the awards evening.  The programme honours visionary and humanitarian applications of information technology that promote positive social, economic and educational change.

A panel of judges assessed case studies submitted by individuals and organisations showcasing their efforts to create and use information technology to promote and advance public welfare, contribute to the greater good of society and change the world for the better.

Following the awards ceremony, the case study based on The IUSN Foundation was included in the programme’s international archives.

The IUSN Foundation, based in Massachusetts USA, is internationally recognised as a leader in internet governance and has a mission of maintaining a free and open internet. It relies on a longstanding marketing partnership with WorldNames Inc, operator of the .NU domain name, to generate the funds needed to carry out its charitable missions.

[ends]

Internet Niue says it is facing ever-increasing satellite connection fees as customers make more use of the rapidly growing range of services available on the internet. In its 2010 Annual Report the service says the $214,738 paid in fees during 2010 was the equivalent of $147 a head for each citizen on the island.

Internet access, which is free to customers once they have paid for a connection, is funded by grants from the US-based IUSN Foundation, which has the right to market .nu domain names internationally.

Foundation chairman Hon Frank Lui says this is a unique arrangement that serves the island’s internet community well.

“It’s not easy to provide an efficient internet service on a remote and rugged tropical island. But more than 90 per cent of our population has access to our service either at home and/or at work,” he says.

“In my opinion Internet Niue is something for the people of Niue to be proud of.”

During 2010, the Foundation’s on-island service provider RockET Systems Limited connected the villages of Mutulau, Makefu, Tamakautonga and Vaiea to the internet. Only three villages on the island remain to be connected – a task that will be completed in the next few months.

RockET director Emani Fakaotimanava-Lui says more families are signing up to the internet as soon as the service arrives in their village. He puts this down to connection kits becoming more affordable.

A full home installation for all-you-can eat internet now costs $450 to $500. For some users in the capital of Alofi, WiFi signals are strong enough to allow them to connect using the wireless cards in their laptops, which means they only need to pay $25 for an access code.

The Annual Report shows Internet Niue’s annual operating expenditure peaked at $NZ726,809 in 2010 and that total spending since 1999 has reached $4,191,884. Big year-to-year fluctuations reflect the profitability and investment needs of the .nu domain sales business, as well as the needs of Internet Niue, the report says.

Technical charts in the report show that customers are making increasing use of Internet Niue’s satellite bandwidth, despite a quadrupling of capacity during 2010.

The report notes that the maximum bandwidth of 4 megabits per second will sound small to users in larger countries that have fibre optic cables connecting them to the world. Niue, like many other small Pacific nations, relies on very expensive satellite connections.

To read the Annual Report click here.

[ends]

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Wow! IUSN has now invested more than $NZ4m in Internet Niue http://tinyurl.com/3fmpmj7

The 4.5 metre dish, which cost more than $US100,000, has been tested for a month and is now operating efficiently.

The new dish will make Niue's internet connections less vulnerable to cyclones or the loss of a satellite link

Project manager Emani Fakaotimanava-Lui of RockET Systems, Alofi, says the hurricane-strength concrete base was poured late last year. Since then he has been working with satellite company Pactel and other equipment suppliers to get the new dish up and running.

“All Internet Niue and Government of Niue email and web traffic is now going through the new dish, with the Kaimiti dish available for back-up,” he says.

“Our plan is to have Kaimiti linked to a second provider, so that if something goes wrong with the Pactel satellite link, Niue will still be connected to the worldwide web. Negotiations with possible providers are now underway.”

A year ago, Internet Niue increased the bandwidth it buys from Pactel on behalf of the Niue internet community to 4 megabits a second. This was the maximum the 3.8 metre Kaimiti dish could handle.

When the second provider comes on board, Internet Niue plans to use the Kaimiti connection to increase bandwidth by a further 50 per cent.

Per Darnell, president of the US-based IUSN Foundation which funds Internet Niue, says the new dish is a major investment and reflects the foundation’s commitment to the internet community on the island.

“The old dish at Kaimiti is on the edge of the Pactel satellite’s transmission path, which meant it was vulnerable to signal outages – though thankfully there have been very few of those. Also, in a country that’s prone to devastating cyclones, there are obvious risks in relying on one dish, a single location and a single satellite provider,” he says.

“The first dish we installed at Kaimiti was, along with the Telecom dish, destroyed by Cyclone Heta in 2004.”

The IUSN Foundation, which has the right to market .nu domain names, undertakes to provide least-cost or free internet services to the government and people of Niue.

Mr Fakaotimanava-Lui says the dish has been a major project for Niue. The island has a small construction sector and there are big delays associated with getting technical equipment and replacement parts from New Zealand and further afield. He thanks the contractors, friends and officials who made it possible.

For more information, please ring Emani Fakaotimanava-Lui, Tel +683 4638 (Niue) or Per Darnell, Tel +46 708 350 750 (Sweden)