| Affiliation with other organizations: |
FDC has been involved with advancing women and women's issues through several projects relating to local economies and livelihoods, governance and leadership, and the mining and resource sector.
More specifically, FDC has been affiliate with the UN on two of these projects:
UNDEF: The Bottom up Governance Leadership Program for Women in the Pacific (BGLP)
BGLP aimed to increase women’s knowledge of governance and leadership in the Pacific and support bottom-up governance initiatives by women in their local communities.
In conjunction with partners and affiliates, FDC implemented BGLP in Fiji, Tonga, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.
FDC recruited 5 local affiliates to support BGLP within each country, they included:
• Solomon Islands National Council of Women
• Civil Society Forum of Tonga
• People's Action for Rural Development Inc, Papua New Guinea
• The Microfinance Competence Centre - PNG Institute of Banking and Business Management
• Partners in Community Development Fiji
Feedback and inputs were sought from these project affiliates and partners for the refinement of the BGLP course curriculum at a recent TOT workshop in Nadi, Fiji. The revised training program covered a variety of themes, including modules relating to: Democracy and Ethics; Governance; and Leadership. Materials were then made available to participants by way of an e-learning knowledge management platform on the BGLP website http://www.bglp.org/ and as hardcopy curriculum materials.
Participants were encouraged to design a local initiative to improve the involvement of women in governance and assist women to participate more actively in leadership roles. Ten participants were then selected, based on the quality of their proposals, to attend a fully-funded Participatory Project Management Workshop. Five selected applicants from the workshop were then awarded USD $5,000 grants each; to develop and manage their proposed local initiative, with mentoring support from FDC.
UN Women Pacific:
Partner’s Improving Marketplaces project seeks to improve the social, economic and physical conditions of women market vendors and to encourage local governments and other bodies tasked with managing markets to adopt a gender responsive approach to marketplace planning, operations and governance.
Women market vendors in the Pacific regularly experience a number of occupational problems including: lack of transport facilities to get themselves and their goods to and from the market; lack of basic facilities (e.g. toilets, shelter, water supply, clean surroundings); lack of safety and security measures to protect them; uncooperative local government authorities; outdated or vague regulations regarding market vendors and their rights; lack of organised vendor representation; lack of business development services for women vendors (i.e. microfinance and other services) and sometimes very primitive asset management and maintenance systems.
This project aims were to strengthen market women vendor’s economic security and rights by:
1) Providing recommendations for the development of a Fiji Market Improvement Handbook to guide the improvement of markets.
2) Reviewing existing market by-laws and developing recommendations for improvement through a participatory process with market stakeholders.
3) Assessing current asset management policies in existing markets and helping to develop enabling conditions for the diversification of market products.
4) Facilitating the adoption of gender responsive budgeting by local governments.
5) Facilitating the formation of rural women market vendors associations.
6) Assisting selected markets and stakeholders in preparing donor proposals for market improvements.
7) Contributing to national policies on market places as part of informal sector development.
The Fiji target markets for this phase were: Suva, Nausori, Sigatoka and Labasa. |
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