By Maxine Tuwila Lesivou
femLINKpacific had just concluded its Western District Consultation with Tavua being the last District to be convened late last week. Fifteen (15) diverse rural women leaders attended the convening from various groups, clubs and communities.
The discussion today was mainly around disaster preparedness and response specifically for Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG).
Speaking on Friday, Hetali Lata said “during this pandemic, there’s an increasing number of domestic violence cases in my community. Women aren’t able to access the services because of fear – we need to prepare for these situations during disaster periods because it will definitely increase”
She added that in previous crisis, women aren’t able to get help and support since evacuation centers weren’t always friendly.
“Evacuation centers are mostly unfriendly to us evacuees. When a woman is being violated in an evacuation center, no one will help because we see it as a “family problem” and not a “me problem” – we need to change this mindset.”
Suliana Nateru the representative from Yaladro Youth Group shared the same sentiments and said that we need to always be prepared and made sure that we have our trusted family and friends to help support us in times of crisis.
“Having our trusted family members and friends around us during a crisis is important so they can help us in finding support and we need to always be prepared during such event.
Nateru added that when women have this depth of knowledge than we will be able to overcome challenges and make necessary changes.
“When women have this knowledge on preparedness, then we are able to better prepare ourselves and our community in identifying the gaps and influence decision makers in this country in terms of our policies” she added.
Miliakere Salaivalu shared that as a village health worker and a market vendor, we need to equip ourselves with preparedness tips especially since we’re nearing disaster period. She added that prior to TC Winston, women leaders in villages do not understand what a “category 5” is.
Salaivalu a member of the Tavua Market Vendors Association added that weather warnings need to be precise, accurate and simple so women can better prepare themselves.
“Weather warning messages needs to be clear and accurate and it needs to be communicated across not only through texts messages. The language used should be simple so ordinary citizens can understand and prepare ourselves. When the media says Category 5 cyclone, they need to simplify the information so we know. They need to make it clear because the next time, it’s important to prepare.”
The women leaders acknowledged femLINKpacific’s Women’s Weather Watch platforms for providing relevant information on what is needed and required for ordinary citizens.
WWW is an inter-operable communication platform developed initially for early warning communication to women specifically for women in the rural areas. At the heart of the system is community radio and today, the system is a two-way information system enabling network members to also provide real-time situation weather updates which are used for media and podcast productions.
Discussions from the 3 district convenings also focused on gaps that currently exist within communities and during the past three days, recommendations to these gaps from women leaders in the Western Division would be collated together and documented to drive a call for action to relevant stakeholders.
Communities represented in this convening includes District Advisory Councillors (DAC), members of the LGBTIQ + community, Young Women, members of the District Council of Social Services (DCOSS), Community Health Care workers and Village leaders
