Elderly Australian couple, Richard Tendys and Wendy Stenberg-Tendys, CEO’s of YouMe Support Foundation, a registered charity in Vanuatu, are hosting a Guinness World Record on November 19th in Vanuatu, a tropical island in the South Pacific.

The aim is to raise awareness of the vital need of literacy and education in Vanuatu.

On November 19th, 2009, 820 Ni-Vanuatu children will attempt to beat the world record for ‘The Most Number Of People To Write a Story In 24 Hours’. The current record is held by 797 participants, organized by Novum Verlag GmbH in Neckenmarkt, Austria, on 15th July, 2007.

Vanuatu has around 156 different languages, in a tropical island archipelago that stretches across nearly 1000 kms. For the majority of the Ni-Vanuatu children English is their third or fourth language, following their home island language and Bishlama, the local common language used by the Ni-Vanuatu people. The students will have to add a sentence to the story, every 30 seconds, in English, if the challenge is to succeed.

In 2006 Vanuatu was voted the Happiest Country on Earth, based on its environmental footprint. Yet it is a tropical island country that has no free or compulsory education. Only 56% of children can afford to go to school and of those only 25% go to high school, with less than 2 % able to afford tertiary education. Plus there are many children who never set foot inside a school classroom.

The Guinness World Record Challenge story will be based around two children and a magic giant tortoise, (Vanuatu was once the home of giant tortoises). The characters fly over 1000 kms, across all 83 Vanuatu islands, in their race to gather pieces of a map, which reveals the hiding place of a long lost treasure chest.
The children’s travels will highlight the truly great features of Vanuatu, as they fly from the giant kauri forests and the biggest banyan tree in the world, as well as a live volcano in the deep south, to fire walking and water music in the north. They will visit a bank where pig tusks are the only currency and uncover all sorts of exciting challenges in their travels.

The story will be visualized by a talented Ni-Vanuatu cartoonist, Guy Deroin. The story will be published as an ebook on the Internet, as well as being printed into a hard copy. All sponsors to this exciting project will be published in the book.

These kids have dreams like all other kids. They just want the opportunity to be allowed to let their dreams come true. As the United Nations Charter says, every child has the right to an education. If the Tendys get to fulfill their dream (they are raffling their property on the Internet, to raise funds for the Foundation), many more students will be attending high school in the very near future.