PIANGO‘s Investment in Next Generation Leadership Commended at Women’s Conference
1st June 2018 (For Immediate Release)
(Suva, FIJI) -----Accompaniment and the role of women mentors to next generation civil society leaders is key to
sustaining the efforts for a just and sustainable Pacific.
This was echoed by the recently appointed Fiji Council of Social Services (FCOSS) executive director, Vani Catanasiga at
the National Women in Politics Forum organised by the Media Watch Group in Suva yesterday. Catanasiga a former PIANGO
employee, left to take up the FCOSS leadership role.
Speaking at a panel on #Pressforprogress in our Communities Fiii and the Region, Catanasiga highlighted the importance
of women mentors such as the Pacific Islands Association of NGOs executive director, Emele Duituturaga in preparing the
next generation for leadership in the region’s civil society sector.
“By 2016 I had joined PIANGO which operates at the regional level dealing with governance and policy advocacy. What I
found quite rewarding about my time in PIANGO is the training and mentoring I was given by PIANGO’s Executive Director,
Emele Duituturaga.
She said leaving PIANGO and the benefit of Duituturaga’s accompaniment was her main worry when she considered joining
FCOSS.
“But when I discovered that FCOSS board consisted of well-respected women leaders such as the Catholic Women’s League
Asela Naisara, Fiji Muslim Women’s League’s Julekha Mustapha and YWCA stalwart, Cema Bolabola and other outstanding
community leaders from all over Fiji I immediately said yes.”
Catanasiga has been part of the development of PIANGO’s programme on NGL which has been supported since 2016 by Bread
for the World, PIANGO’s funding partner.
“Supporting Pacific CSO next generation leaders is about ensuring the sustainability of our current work on justice and
the protection of dignity in Pacific communities,” Duituturaga said.
“Accompaniment is also about ensuring that we as current CSO leaders walk with emerging leaders in their journey as they
try to make sense and understand the call to rethink development until they can articulate in their own ways their
generation’s alternative paradigm of development.”
She said PIANGO was preparing to host a bigger gathering of Pacific NGL, CSO leaders and elders in the next fortnight to
create deliberate spaces for learning and mentoring between the younger and older generations on Pacific philosophies
and the alternative paradigm.
“ PIANGO has been working with the Pacific Theological College (PTC), University of the South Pacific (USP) and the Fiji
National University (PTC) to plan this Inaugural Pacific Indigenous Philosophies Conference in the last few months.”
Duituturaga said they will officially announce details of the event on Monday at the PTC in Nasese.
Ends