By Anela Liwaki
With God nothing is impossible. Centered and rooted in
Christ and Christian teachings, Elesi Tupou Veikoso, a beautiful 20 year old
from Lau uttered this Bible verse as a quote that sustains her in this life.
Tupou, known to many as Pou originated from Mualevu in Vanua Balavu and has
maternal links to Sawaieke, Gau in the Lomaiviti Group.
Tupou deemed her parents and her flamboyant older brother
Jofiliti Veikoso as her greatest role models and the King too, which had me
lost for a moment until she gleefully smiled and pointed towards the sky. She
is a vibrant girl who always seems to have that warm Bula smile and contagious
laugh, an indicator of how cool, outgoing, fun and free spirited she is. When
asked to describe Tupou, Esther Davetawalu a mutual friend of ours, portrayed
her as a beautiful, confident, outgoing girl with an exciting personality as
she blends in well with everyone. Tupou’s
hobbies are surfing the net, reading and dancing and I must add that she is a great
dancer. Give her a good beat and she’s ready to break it down. Her passion is
working her own self to be better in leadership and management and this aligns
well with her aspirations of becoming a Human Resource Manager (somewhere in
Hawaii) and her striving towards always being a better person.
The young woman is an ex-scholar of Tilak High School and she
is affiliated to her church youth group which is the Seventh Day Adventist
Pathfinder Club and also Youths for Integrity. Joining the SDA Pathfinder club
has allowed her to grow spiritually, and joining YFI has helped groom up her
character to be a person of integrity. She claims that since joining YFI in
2015, YFI has nurtured and helped her grow more confident in herself. “I was
shy before but since joining YFI, I’ve opened up and came out of my comfort
zone,” shared Tupou. Being part of YFI has been a great experience for this
insightful young woman as it has extended her knowledge on so many life-long
important lessons. Tupou highlighted lesson about integrity, anti-corruption
and how we can be agents of change in the fight against corruption to make good
changes as some of the most important things she has learned. Another important
lesson that she learned along the way and wanted to share was that we are not
alone. Whatever adversity we are going through, we should know that someone cares
and is always there to share the burden with us and help us through.
Querying Tupou on how she thinks the messages she has
learned could be made known to other youths, she explained that similar
training could be done more to advocate these messages. Furthermore, she
explained that in the process of spreading important knowledge she learnt
within YFI to her SDA Pathfinder group, she will advocate it in parallel with
Christian teachings so that these teaching can be well received by her brothers
and sisters in Christ. In addition, she strongly believes that advocating about
integrity, corruption and the fight against corruption to everyone and not just
the youths and taking these messages out to rural areas to make it more
accessible to them is the way forward in creating a better Fiji.
All in all, I believe from the few days I’ve been
acquainted with Tupou is that she will go a long way in life achieving all she
plans to achieve. She is intelligent, determined and confident that she will achieve
just as that famous saying goes, if there
is a will, there is a way. Furthermore, from the way she was answering my
interview questions and from the fact that she is part of YFI group, I could
gauge that she is passionate about youths like herself getting all the advocacy
they need in order to be youths of integrity for a better Fiji. I want to add
that it’s youths like Tupou with
passion, vision and determination to make an impact and bring about good
changes that are the ones who will be instrumental in making the world a better
place.
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