Registering for Rio+20, 11 June

Registration

From Fiji to Papua New Guinea to Samoa then on to Rio!   Ms. Kathleen Leewai, the Publications and Communications Intern at SPREP is attending her first international environment conference - the Rio+20, this has been made possible with support from PACMAS, SPREP and Conservation International Pacific Island Program.  Born and raised in Fiji, Kathleen has lived in Papua New Guinea, Australia and now in Samoa at SPREP where she works as the Publications and Communications Intern.  This is Kathleens first time outside of the Pacfic region, read about her experiences.

 

11 June 2012 -- The first morning in Rio dawned sunny and cool, and I was up early, ready to head to the convention centre to register, receive an awesome conference badge, and stakeout the pavilions to see where I’ll be spending most of my time over the next two weeks.

Needless to say the excitement of the morning was severely dampened by being told that we weren’t in the system and couldn’t, therefore, register.

Apparently the process involved completing forms that needed official seals and signatures from the Ambassador and passport photos emailed to the organisers, both of which we hadn’t managed to do before leaving Apia.

So now we’ve been granted an extra day to prepare for our side event and our media work, that hasn’t been easy what with the internet going up and down and my body still trying to adjust to the new time zones and the jetlag!

Update 12 June 2012 -- Forms were signed, sealed, and delivered in record time thanks to the wonders of technology (email) but a further venture to the convention centre proved unsuccessful due to the delay of the system updating.

50,000+ registered participants will do that. We have been assured, though, that our registration will be completed tomorrow morning, so that’s definitely something to look forward to.