The news from Vanuatu was even worse than we feared. Cyclone Pam had ripped through the village with 270km/h winds, destroying homes and gardens in just a few hours.
It also left in its wake the new toilets villagers had spent years of painstaking work to complete, supported by World Vision New Zealand and the NZ Government.
A few weeks later we returned to this remote village in the highlands of Tanna Island expecting the worst. Instead we were greeted with singing and dancing as the community proudly showed us their newly rebuilt toilets.
There was still so much else to be done but they had started with the toilets, and they had done it all themselves. Why start with the toilets? Because they were changing lives.
Before the toilets the village's women were forced to trek deep into the bush to find privacy. This made them vulnerable to sexual violence.
In Vanuatu only 55 per cent of rural communities have access to toilets. But this village refused to be defined by the circumstance they faced. They had seen the difference a toilet could make to the women in their community, and these resources were a priority as the people climbed back to their feet after disaster.
In communities across Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, these tight-knit societies look after each other when they need to. If one family can't afford school fees their neighbour will sell a pig to help out.
If the nearest health clinic is a day's drive away you rely on the local women to assist with emergency births. When you are as remote as some of the places where World Vision works, you have little choice.
And in the Pacific this is what World Vision strives to do. To inspire communities to rebuild their toilets, to inspire women to educate the community on how to have a healthy pregnancy and baby.
We help communities that have survived for thousands of years build on the strength of their society.
And throughout the past three weeks you have shown the same solidarity with our Pacific neighbours.
Our isolated corner of the world is one few are aware of. And the issues facing the communities in places like PNG and the Solomon Islands are even further hidden from view.
This makes the assistance you have offered our neighbours through The Hidden Pacific campaign all the more important. Because if these isolated communities can't look to us when they need support to grow stronger, or when disaster strikes, they have few other friends to turn to.
We can't stop the next cyclone hitting Vanuatu, but we can help brace for it. You have helped these communities grow more resilient. You have empowered them to face these challenges with knowhow and resolve.
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