Youngest awardee will go back home as a proud seafood businesswoman

“I’m one of the luckiest women in my village to be part of the USP PEUMP Programme micro-qualification in Establishing and Operating a Small Seafood Business.”

Those are the words of 19-year-old Winifred Doughty who hails from Tavewa Village in Yasawa and has maternal links to Nasolo in Ba after she was chosen to represent the Nasolo Women’s Cooperative as part of the scholarship program organised by the University of the South Pacific.

She says her plans to join the Rosie Holidays Academy failed as her enrollment had to be put on hold due to the effects of COVID 19.

The 19-year-old says the Nasolo women dive for fresh kai and sell it in the market.

Doughty says being young and not being in school was one of the many challenges she had to go through.

She plans to begin her kai export business when she goes back to her home in Nasolo, Ba.