Renewed efforts are underway to preserve the cultures and traditions in some of the commonwealth countries.

This comes after forty participants raised their concerns of how people are slowly moving away from their roots, during the Commonwealth Association of Museum workshop in Suva today.

CAM Secretary, Catherine Cole says belonging to a culture provides people with a sense of identity, purpose and belonging.

“It’s absolutely critical as young people are so influenced by external cultures. There’s one thing to preserve culture in the sense of achieving it, collecting it but you don’t really preserve a culture unless you continue it. The culture values and traditions so it’s really important to have opportunities to share cultures.”

This is the first workshop of its kind where the preservation of culture through education has become the most important topic at hand.

Meanwhile, participants were shown to some of the traditional wears, dances, paintings and food of the iTaukei culture by students of Ratu Sukuna Memorial School.

The workshop ends tomorrow.