Carnival Spirit cruise New Caledonia & Vanuatu 30/03/2015

[ozziepost]

I just received an email from Carnival indicating that our itinerary which was to visit Noumea, Mare, Mystery Island and Vila. Has been changed to Noumea, Mare, Lifou and Santo as a result of the direct hit that Vanuatu received from cyclone Pam. Just a bit disappointing in a way that we won't be going to Vila as we were packing a small bag of school materials and good clean second hand clothes to hand out hopefully there will be somewhere at Santo where we can leave these.

 

Just an update for anyone going on this cruise.

[cruisine21]

Update from Carnival on Facebook:

 

We’re touched by the outpouring of support from our guests and facebook community for the people of Vanuatu who have been impacted by Cyclone Pam.

We're in close contact with Save the Children who are coordinating the relief efforts on the ground. They are assessing the damage and determining what the communities require in order to rebuild. There will be significant needs in the short and long term to allow Vanuatu to recover and Save the Children is committed to providing for them.

 

Because the needs of the communities will be very specific and vary by location, we ask that you do not bring any physical donations onboard to donate personally. Customs regulations in Vanuatu make it impossible to off-load materials without prior regulatory approval. And at this point, the Customs team in Vanuatu is very busy and focused on the official relief effort and working closely with organizations like Save the Children to get large scale relief and recovery supplies to the affected communities. We need to allow them to do that and not distract them from the big task at hand.

Edited March 18, 2015 by cruisine21

[Tigerlily75]

While peoples hearts are in the right place, unfortunately the logistics of accepting physical donations would require an entire team dedicated to storage, sorting, packing, transporting and distributing. The best thing people can do to help is to donate money to reputable organisations who are best equipped to give the right help where it is needed, even if only a small amount, every bit helps.

[ozziepost]

You have made a perfectly valid point. Apparently Carnival have indicated that taking donations of goods ashore is not a good idea due to customs protocols.

I am going to make further inquiries to see if there is somewhere in Sydney's CBD where we can drop these items off prior to sailing. Failing that we will still take the bag of school materials with us and see if we can hand these to a community group at Luganville.

 

I appreciate your input in this respect.

[ozziepost]

Yes I totally agree with what Carnival are doing. I will look forward to planning another cruise later in the year or in 2016. When cruise ships are able to again visit Vila the best way we can assist is to spend as much as we can to help the local economy recover from this terrible event.