Focus: The South Seas tribe
By Deirdre Fernand and Vanessa Jolly

April 09, 2006 [The Sunday Times – Britain] Want to join a South Seas tribe and help build a utopia on an adventure island?

It’s a unique social experiment and one that could revolutionise tourism. A global call is being put out on the internet for 5,000 people to join together, form a tribe and establish their own “eco-democracy” on a South Seas island.

Click on www.tribewanted.com and you will be transported to the island of Vorovoro, which sits 25 minutes by boat from the Fijian mainland in the south Pacific. An idyll of blue lagoons, coconut groves, crested parakeets and crashing surf, it’s the stuff of utopian dreams.

But you need dream no longer. Two British entrepreneurs, Ben Keene and Mark James, both 26, have rented this small piece of paradise from a local chief and plan to recruit their own tribe to inhabit and develop it over the next three years.

For a fee of between £120 and £360 you can become a member of the tribe. In return you will be given visiting rights and an ongoing say in the way the island is run.

Drawn from all over the world, the first of the 5,000 participants will arrive this summer, limited to 100 at any one time.

“People will be making history on a tiny ripple of rock, jungle and sand in the south Pacific,” said Keene last week. “It’s not just a holiday but the chance to join a unique tribe and help build a new community, both physically and online.”

The project aims to fuse the hedonism and adventure long offered by backpack travel with the more recent trends towards “ethical” living and sustainable development. A strictly democratic society, it will be one tribesman, one vote.

Each member will be able to spend up to three weeks a year in Fiji but will remain linked to the tribe from their homes and offices for the rest of the time via the internet.

Read more:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2125192,00.html
http://www.tribewanted.com