“LOOKING NORTH" WITH FEMTALK 89.2FM-SUPPORTED BY UNESCO

As part of femLINKpacific’s current community radio initiatives enabled by a grant of UNESCO, Sharon Bhagwan Rolls (femLINKpacific’s Coordinator) together with Adi Vasu Chute, one of our Labasa-based community radio (femTALK 89.2FM) volunteer- focal points met with a range of women’s groups and leaders in Labasa town and surrounding areas.

From Bulileka and Baubale to Naleba; from Namara in town to Nabekavu and Tabia, for many of the women we met and conversed with, this was the first time to be approached to share their stories, that for many it was even too hard to piece together the words to express their situation; we shared tea, juice even kava, whatever was appropriate, to create an enabling environment; we sat on the floor with them, even though they offered us, the few chairs that they had.

This special bulletin is an opportunity to share some of our initial findings with our peace, development and media partners and friends “femTALK from the North” (jpeg format pictures are available on request)

Critical areas of concern identified through the community based consultations; these issues would form the basis of the pre broadcast consultations as well as the ‘broadcast clusters’:

a) Issue based information delivery – femLINKpacific community videos (with the viewing and discussion guides) can be distributed to women’s groups in the Macuata Province as well as provide to the Ministry of Women for information sharing; as discussed with several of the women, local group leaders could facilitate the viewing and discussions themselves, once they are provided with the necessary information tools.

b) Strengthening women’s right to information and communication – Many of the women we spoke to have never been asked their opinion and therefore lack self esteem and the confidence to articulate their issues of concern; this is a critical starting point; and an important linkage with the Fiji “WISDM” (women in shared decision making network which femLINKpacific belongs to) where we could collectively contribute to creating an enabling environment for women to share in decision making at community, local, village/provincial level including national level decision making

c) Inter Cultural Awareness – an important starting point for the theme “women speaking to women for peace”; this can be facilitated by Adi Vasu herself who is a trained local peace facilitator herself; we also need to identify additional training opportunities for Adi Vasu to strengthen her role as a focal point for femLINKpacific/femTALK 89.2FM. This would further strengthen our linkage with the Gender and Peace programme of the Ecumenical Centre for Research, Education and Advocacy.

Women consulted about this theme were very keen to be able to collectively work together starting with the sharing of their traditional and cultural beliefs and viewpoints on their critical areas of concern both during the workshop, which would be recorded and included in the radio broadcasts.

d) Poverty alleviation strategies – Due to existing information and communication constraints (within the media, government and women’s civil society networks) the women’s community in the area of the northern division we visited are not aware of existing programmes and projects which could alleviate their current poverty situation, including the successful AGLOW micro-credit scheme in partnership with the Ministry of Commerce. femLINKpacific’s role is to assist in the facilitation of such information flow as we are not actual service providers.

Women in the poorer communities such as those we spoke to at the HART Settlement talked about barely being able to afford to buy their sanitary supplies, and how demeaning it felt to go without:

“Sometimes we even have to go without pads; I feel like an outcast, feel like I don’t belong, although sometimes I am lucky to be able to travel to Suva so I can then buy some things”

Several teachers shared that some of their students’ families are unable to afford school fees, general school supplies and even uniforms and this has a negative effect contributing greatly to low esteem amongst these poorer children on the children themselves.
Poverty is being faced by a range of communities – farmers and their families are not reaping the previous benefits of their cane farms; High cost of household goods including groceries was also a critical concern.

Labourers and their families who once had work for at least 6 months of the year during the cane harvesting season, can no longer rely on the ailing sugar industry, which has been struck by the impact of the non renewal of cane farm leases, the exodus of farming families and resulting non cultivation of farming land.

Even those families who move to the town area add to the burden of unemployment faced by many already because of the limited employment opportunities in the town. The evolving negative impact of this economic depression is being faced by many within the community:

“I know of people trying to keep two jobs but then their children are left alone.”
Even mothers who have started small food stalls in the town area told us of the poor sales – after all if the people do not have spare money they are not going to buy food packs or crafts or chutneys/jams, “Sometimes there is nothing for the mothers to cook apart from “uto” (breadfruit) and “baigan” (eggplant) one headmaster told us.

e) Understanding channels of decision making – there is not only an important need for women to understand the formal decision making process from local to provincial or district level and then the national / regional even international level, but also decision making as local members of national women’s organisations which are then affiliated to the National Council of Women Fiji as well as the Soqosoqo Vakamarama (the indigenous women’s network):

“But when it comes to being heard with men we are left behind, especially as working mothers, why (are) us women always left behind all the time…even though we are being prompted to lead why do we still face negative comments?”

Women at one consultation, showed great willingness to be supported and assisted to actively participate in the current land discussions:

“As women we need to be attending meetings” they said, but noted the lack of information about when such meetings were staged, the lack of resources to prepare their submissions as well as attend the meetings, and a general frustration with the lack of progress towards a “just” outcome to the negotiations for both landowners and tenantsf) Impact of poverty on girls’ access to education as well as tertiary education and employment – many women/mothers told us that if they are unable to afford to educate their daughters, then they are withdrawn from school and often they are married off and as one mother said “and hopefully the boy we find will be a good man.” It should be noted with the poor state of the Labasa economy which has a huge reliance on the sugar industry, there are not many employment opportunities available in the town, and even if new factories are open, then women maybe actually working at a very low income rate which actually exacerbates the poverty situation:

“Now our main concern is our children, we want to educate our children because the land is being taken away from us, but without job opportunities we are concerned”

The 16 year old head girl of Tabia Sanatan Secondary School shared her concerns of young women getting married as early as 14 and 15, and the difficulty for many of her co- students, especially the girls, to raise personal issues with their mothers

g) Impact of the Non Renewal of Land Leases as well as the loss of their houses – this has to become a national point of concern as much of the decision making and negotiations on this long standing and quite political issue has been in the hands of the male dominated political parties as well as the Native Lands Trust Board (NLTB); because many of the women do not know their ‘rights’ to land and housing, for example through the ratification of the UN Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and other international instruments and commitments (such as the Beijing Platform for Action) they have been unable to become part of the solution to this issue.

Many women who we met hold the leases to their family farms and often organise the traditional-based negotiations with the landowners themselves:

“Our lease expires next year but we still don’t know where to go (and) if we don’t take our house before the lease expires next year we have to leave it …”

“So when we get (the expiry ) notice, we get ready to leave but we don’t know where we are going…so how can we plan for the house?”

Two indigenous women married into local Indian farming families shared their desperation and frustration with the unwillingness of the landowners to renew the leases and the impact it is having on their personal and their families lives:

“We are struggling ourselves for our families to survive because we don’t have husbands going out to work…..”

“I don’t know what I have done wrong that they won’t lease it back, not even half, not even a small piece of land,” said a widow who had even gone to the extent of selling the farm truck to afford the money to negotiate with the landowning “mataqali”

h) Women’s health issues – access to the local hospital and health centres; women also shared with us that they were often not treated well when they actually accessed the health service providers as there did not seem to be time for the local health service providers to undertake thorough checks and many women just keep quiet about their health concerns; at the same time they find the availability of affordable pharmaceutical supplies are problem as even the local chemists in town may not stock what they need; poor after hours services.

For example, women living in the Tabia area, the nearest health centre which is the main hospital in Labasa town, this is 15 kilometres away or 30 minutes by car or up to 60 minutes by bus (and the last return bus from town leaves at 5pm) together with the associated costs were extremely concerning.

Poor availability of health based information is also a concern. It was quite ironic that our visit coincided with “World Health Week” however, there no visible activity or mention by the women about the week’s theme or activities, nor was there information readily available even in the town area; ironic because even though the national theme, which was focusing on key national and international development goals, maternal and child health, “We have never been invited to talk to the Ministry of Health” women told us.

i ) Associated both with the health issue and the situation of women is the access to clean water, situation of women’s labour – need to address the double burden of labour as many women have to travel considerable distance to fetch and carry water, as investment in community “bore holes” is not an affordable option for everyone.

At the same time concern was raised that the unequal division of labour within extended family networks meant a lot of “daughters in laws” had so many responsibilities and work to do that they had limited opportunities outside of the home; it was suggested that l local women’s club activities such as the “Ramayan mandali gatherings” could be expanded to enable issue and information based activities

j) Rural infrastructure development – critical concern across all communities; mothers noted the need for their children having to walk more than 30 minutes to school; some teachers told us that their students were having to wake up at 5am to be able to get to school on time and this naturally affects their performance. “If our bus breaks down there is no other service,” many mothers shared

k) Teachers and mothers identified the need to provide information on parent and child positive relationship building – “Never mind we are poor, go without, our family should be happy, we need to address the family problems, mothers, daughters and sons need training” one mother told us.

l) Child Protection Issues: Across various communities there was increasing concern for personal safety and also child protection:

2. Communication and Information Gap adds to the problems

We took this visit as an opportunity to gather the following information from women at each meeting:

a) What are your sources of information: radio, television, newspaper, other/community networking?

b) How do you validate the information you receive?

c) What opportunities are there for you to share your information? How do you reach the press, radio announcers, television, other networks?

d) What is it you would like people outside of the Vanua Levu to know about you / your issues, situation

e) What information are you interested in receiving?

Clearly there is a need for greater information flow to women in rural communities using the mainstream radio, which for most women we consulted is their primary source of information. The wives and mothers also noted with disappointment the gap in including their voices, their perspectives on local women’s radio programmes, many cited that there is a lot of Suva-based or Viti Levu based information and they cannot “hear their own stories”. And because many of the rural women do not even have their own telephone, they cannot participate in talk –back programmes or even competitions. One women’s group told us that even when radio stations have visited their communities, it has been to record them singing Hindustani folk songs, and no one interviewed them about their “stories”

Those who can afford television also noted the television news, as source of information and the banner messages which are transmitted during Fiji One;s downtime in programming were a potential source of information.

3. Reaffirmation of femLINKpacific’s policy approach:

It was encouraging to note that the policy based focus areas of the women’s community radio is linked into the realities of these women’s lives:

a) Strengthening women in decision making: Many of the women we spoke to in their communities told us how much they appreciated our visit because it is not often that they get visits where they are asked to identify their concerns and as we highlighted in the application that because of cultural and traditional constraints many women told us of how they are ‘pushed to the back’ when it comes to community meeting – younger women are pushed back even further. It is therefore very encouraging to see that our plans to assist women find their voice in their community first using our community radio project would also assist the broader women’s movement in identifying potential women leaders to further nurture for roles such as being appointed to the Rural Advisory Council – we found out that on the Macuata Rural Advisory Council there has only been one woman appointed – out of a total of 37 members, clearly one sole woman cannot represent the views and needs of all the rural women of this province.

b) Women speaking to women for Peace: as we met with the women’s groups, some were ethnically mixed groups and others were either only Indian women or Fijian women, yet as we explained our station philosophy for women and peace and also the trilingual nature of our broadcasts which would bring women together in issue based clusters rather than based on language this was accepted with definite genuineness as many women did feel that together as women they could identify common interests and solutions to such issues as the land lease arrangements, poverty and unemployment and can also relate to each other as mothers who are trying to educate their children, especially their daughters.

c) Involving young women: as we told the women of our inclusion of young women in our programmes/broadcasts, they were very keen to see this undertaken in their activities with us especially as this would also encourage young women to “hear” from the older women in a more innovative way than workshops or top-down lectures; Having our follow up programme during the Christmas school break would also be an opportunity for the young women to be active participants, we could also involve teachers, who are actively involved in many of the local communities we visited.

What Next ?

Over the next few months, femLINKpacific, with assistance from the New Zealand High Commission will stage two community radio consultations and broadcasts with the Suva absed leadership of the National Council of Women and the Soqosoqo Vakamarama, as a way to contribute to strengthening women and decision making initiatives at national level. It is envisaged that this will also be an opportunity to further address the concerns of this first “Look North” community radio visit.

But there will still be a need to address the growing gaps of information, education and empowerment within the Labasa women’s community, and while we know we cannot do this on our own, nor are we a service delivery organisation, we are working to develop and stage community radio training for local women’s leaders, which will incorporate a series of local community radio broadcasts, documentation initiatives of women leaders profiles, and contribute to strengthening the role of our local focal points.

femLINKpacific is hoping to mobilise the necessary resources to undertake this community radio initiative in conjunction with the annual 16 days of activism campaign, which would also mark the 1st anniversary since the appointment of our focal points.

Later this year, femLINKpacific will be undertaking broadcasts in Sigatoka and Ba (which will include our western division focal points based at FRIEND) through a project funded by the Foundations of the Peoples of the South Pacific / ADB in September/October, so we recognise the need to ensure we do a as the women asked us ….”to come back with the radio” and through this at least offer the women who are feeling so isolated from Viti Levu and from the broader women’s movement, and opportunity to be part of the development of women’s community media in Fiji.

Our proposed community radio training and broadcast initiative for the commemoration of this year’s 16 days of activism against gender violence, includes a women’s exhibition and broadcast on World Human Rights day, Saturday December 10. The AGLOW Women’s leader, Nanise Dunn is willing to use her network to book the FSC Hall, which with its elevated vantage point would also be good for the broadcast transmission; a special broadcast would be undertaken by the young women’s team, featuring segments produced from the local consultations/training both on Viti Levu and Vanua Levu/Macuata; partners from the NGO Coalition on Human Rights could also use this forum to display their material as well as be present to meet with groups of women who attend. Women with whom we discussed this were encouraged by the possibility of having such an activity; it was also noted that we should advise the women as soon as funds were secured for this activity to enable them to prepare themselves (including saving up to come into town on December 10th) and because the activities would be staged during the school holidays, teachers and students alike would also be able to participate freely .The proposed community radio training and broadcast activities for the commemoration of the “2005 16 days of activism …” would be contributing to the need to strengthen women’s recognition of their own right to be informed and to communicate, speak openly on their critical areas of concern, within “safe and women-centred’ forums.

For more information on this proposed community radio initiative or to be part of the programme activities please contact the Coordinator.

Production and Distribution of this Enews Bulletin is made possible with funding assistance through UNIFEM Pacific’s Women, Peace and Security Project for Melanesia and is compiled by femLINKpacific: MEDIA INITIATIVES FOR WOMEN, a Media-based NGO committed to the research, development, production and distribution of community media initiatives which also include:
femTALK 89.2FM a mobile women’s community radio project;
fem’TALK 1325 A quarterly Women and Peace community magazine which aims to provide media space for women and peace initiatives in our

Pacific region as well as increase awareness of the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, titled Women, Peace and Security;
fem’TALK Community videos which are produced to highlight and support the important role of women’s civil society groups and NGOs who work tirelessly to advance the status of women and girls.

In 2003 femLINKpacific received the Fiji Human Rights Commission “TV award” for our community video fem’TALK Balancing the Scales.
femLINKpacific wishes to acknowledge the support of AUSAID, Canada Fund, DFID, ECREA, Global Ministries (USA), International Women’s Development Agency, ISIS Manila, NZAID, UNDP, UNIFEM Pacific, UNESCO & WACC London, Inclusive Security: Women Waging Peace as well as the Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights who have supported our projects to enhance the development of women’s community media.

For more information about our work write to:
The Coordinator, P O Box 2439, Government Buildings, Suva, Fiji Islands
Phone 679 3316290 Mobile: 9244871 Fax (c/- Caines Jannif Limited Head Office) 679 3301925