Three Months in Suva and Levuka in the IVHQ Program

As far as the actual staff goes, all of them are honestly great - friendly, dedicated, and focused on what they're trying to do. You can absolutely tell that they truly care about what it is they're trying to do. Our staff leader would go out of his way to take up his free time with things that were still related to the program - he honestly truly cared about all of the volunteers and the volunteering itself.
This review is in no way a review of either Suva or Fiji in general - the country itself is incredible and opened my eyes to many things. Anything negative that I have to say is NOT in any way directed towards the country. This review is not describing my entire journey, simply the ivhq-related aspects of it - which did take up a majority of my time.
The hard truth is that a very, very small minority appeared to actually care about the placements or the people they were supposed to be aiding in the programs. Unfortunately, the blame does fall slightly on GreenLion itself - the actual charitable organization we were working for. Many in the teaching program had problems with organization - at times they were simply placed in a classroom by the teacher without any explanation or advice. As it seems people here were very easily accepted - no degree or prior teaching experience whatsoever is required if you want to enlist in the teaching program - this didn't end up doing much for the students or the volunteers. On top of this, there were a huge amount of volunteers who didn't seem to care much about the projects either way, instead always focusing on out-of-work activities, bars, clubbing etc.
At least as far as the Greenlion Fiji program, all of the volunteer stereotypes seem to be somewhat true. There were those that would occupy us to our construction site and watch us work while taking photos with the impoverished schoolchildren that would soon decorate the walls and profile photos of their facebook pages. Even in the three months of construction that I did, those that initially seemed to want to have no part in activities like that and falling into the blurred line of volunteerism>voluntourism>tourism ended up being converted into something like tourists by the end of the whole thing - in part much of the blame was certainly on the organizers of greenlion themselves (costs are somewhat pricey and a lot of money seems to be going into the organization yet we work with two shovels and have to wait days or even weeks to receive simple materials like wooden posts), but the apathy of the larger volunteer populace didn't exactly do much to help.
Coming out on this journey it seems like the goals and the thoughts that I set out with don't match up with many of the people - most seem unconcerned about immersing themselves in the culture or the natural beauty of the country, instead doing activities that they could do in practically any other country pretty much every day - e.g clubbing. I now realize that my viewpoint may have been slightly unrealistic, but I don't think - well, didn't - think that assuming fellow volunteers would be as motivated as I would would end up being a wrong assumption. I stand corrected.