The signing of the grant assistance was between the President of the SIAVRTC Cherry Galo and the Project Manger for the EU Sustainable Forestry and Conservation Ms Prudence Reveli.

The succesful signing would bring much needed assistance to many of the rural training centres. President of the SIAVRTC Cherry Galo told Solomon Times that at least six rural centres will benefit from the SBD$989,141.00 assistance.

The six centres are St Dominic VRTC at Vanga, Tabaka VRTC at Munda, Batuna VRTC all in the Western Province. It will also include and Belanimanu and Kaotave VRTC in Guadalcanal Province and Airahu RTC Malaita Province.

Mr. Galo said that the Grant Scheme will be a pilot project, "if succesful the other remaining 32 RTC's will enter into the projects as well." Galo siad that the project will provide technical assistance to these RTC's to assist in a major tree planting project. The assitance will also include a learning module, focussed on tree planting.

"We (RTC) have strong optimism that the funding will extend well into the future...because we are quite focussed on our tree planting programme," he said.