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When a UWA student signed up for a five-month volunteering stint on a remote island in the Vanuatu archipelago, she was counting on it being a life-changing experience.

And then Cyclone Pam hit and there could be no doubt that 21 year-old Miika Coppard would never take anything for granted ever again.

Miika is the daughter of our Dean of Coursework Studies, Professor Grady Venville.

Professor Venville said her daughter had been teaching English at a primary school on the island of Ambae and living with the village chief, his wife and their grandchildren.

“There’s no running water except via water tanks, no electricity, no refrigeration and the only mobile coverage is under what they call a ‘reception tree’, which is a mango tree, perhaps with an aerial,” Professor Venville said.

“Miika calls the chief ‘Pappa’ and lives there with a Canadian volunteer. Sometimes Pappa goes snorkelling and catches fish but most of the time they live on fruit, vegetables, rice and tinned meat and fish.

“At UWA she is studying Population Health and Law and Society and enrolled in a Service Learning unit. This is what encouraged her to volunteer for five months, from February to June, with a group called Lattitude Global.”

Professor Venville said Cyclone Pam did not directly hit Ambae, but it battered Vanuatu’s capital, Port Vila to the south, destroying most of the infrastructure including health facilities, killing many and leaving more than 2000 people with only emergency shelter.

“We had no phone contact with her for a week. It was terrible, but I was convinced in my head and heart that she was OK. It was only when we finally heard that she really was all right that I realised how stressed I’d been,” Professor Venville said.

Miika’s volunteering spirit soared to new heights as she boarded a helicopter which flew her from the relative safety of Ambae to the hell that Port Vila had become.

The young woman with no nursing experience has now spent almost a month working with NGO ProMedical washing and dressing wounds, some of them horrific.

“Miika told me she worries about the people she meets and wonders where the children will sleep. The people don’t know where their next meal will come from and Miika might have dressed their wounds, but they don’t even have shoes.

“When she’s not doing this work, she’s packing boxes full of food and medical supplies for other cyclone-ravaged places.”

Professor Venville joked that pre-Pam, her husband had been looking forward to a ‘tropical holiday’ with their daughter.

“He’s still going, but the call is out for volunteers who can drive trucks and operate a chain-saw. He can do both, so it’s not going to be much of a break!”

Professor Venville said when the ABC visited Port Vila to cover the aftermath of the cyclone, they interviewed Miika and her companions.

“She told me they all looked as if they’d been living in the jungle for a month.

“My parents, Wilma and Harry Venville, spent some time in the late 1960s working as teachers in a remote north-west Aboriginal community – then called the Forrest River Mission – and my mother said she is so proud of Miika. She can see many similarities between her own experiences back then and Miika’s now.

“We’re all very proud of her and how she is coping with this life-changing experience.”

To help provide humanitarian support for the people affected by Cyclone Pam, please consider making a donation to Oxfam Australia , UNICEF Australia or the Australian Red Cross .