The Pacific Resilience Fund is transforming
Pacific Peoples’ Partnership’s Pacific Resilience Fund (PRF) is transforming into an Indigenous Led Fund (ILF). The distribution of PRF and its complementary programming, are guided by a Pacific Islander Advisory Council (PIAC) of trusted members, all of whom are deeply involved in grassroots community development throughout the South Pacific
History
Initially, PPP created the fund to accommodate a growing desire in the Global North to support Pacific Islanders’ long-term efforts to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. The intention was to support programs that build communities’ long term resilience to climate change. This responsive and community directed fund filled gaps at the grassroots level following major disasters in the South Pacific; however, it is not a disaster relief program.
The Pacific Resilience Fund is supported by PPP’s ongoing work in longer term climate resilience programming and advocacy. Highlights have included empowering youth, in Port Vila, Vanuatu; Kastom Food Security, Erromango, Vanuatu; and rebuilding Loreto School in Levuka, Fiji.
The Pacific Resilience Fund Today
As an ILF, we believe when South Pacific Islanders direct the design, strategy setting, implementation, monitoring and funds disbursement, it results in empowerment, resurgence, and self-determination, leading to transformative impact understood by all stakeholders
The PRF is intended to build resilience in Pacific Island communities as they define it. While ultimately supporting the livelihoods and adaptation measures of Pacific communities facing the dual challenges of climate change and covid-19.
Phase 1
The PRF is in its trial phase for 2020/2021; throughout this process we are engaging in active listening and learning to better understand the needs of Pacific Island communities and allow for partners voices to be heard throughout the process, with the ultimate goal to refine the PRF and complimentary programs for Pacific Islanders.
Current Projects Funded
Research on women-led businesses
Melanesian Women Today (MWT) is undergoing a research study to understand what makes Indigenous female small business owners succeed in business for more than five years. The project is overseen by the MWT director and will replicate a peer-reviewed research study (Dr. Mere Sovick, 2017).
This qualitative multiple-case study explores strategies Indigenous female small business owners use to succeed in business beyond five years. This research will support MWT in gaining an understanding of what strategies women entrepreneurs use to overcome constraints or problems, and will allow MWT to create programs that will help female business owners in the future.
Mrs. Aspinol Tari in her shop
Historical preservation in the Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia: A collaborative project between Living Islands Non-Profit and Lihn Mwoakilloa Inc.
Like so many other small atolls in the Pacific Region, Mwoakilloa Atoll (formerly Mokil Atoll) in the Federated States of Micronesia faces depopulation and food insecurities.
Lihn Mwoakilloa Inc. is a women-led organization addressing these issues, promoting sustainable life skills with reliance on traditional knowledge and practices. They promote historical preservation by empowering the present generation with the sustained use of traditional knowledge and practices at the community level through dance, music, arts and crafts, gardening, and cooking.
Self-reliance is predicated on producing sufficient local food resilience and minimizing the dependency on imported goods. An essential household staple in Mwoakilloa (and the Pacific Region in general) is flour. Lihn Mwoakilloa Inc. is starting a program to educate the next generation and re-introduce local flour production from local produce.
Women weaving in the Republic of the Marshall Islands
Strongim Meri Morobe: Strengthening the Women of Morobe
Save PNG is reaching out to rural and remote communities in Morobe Province to conduct awareness on food and nutrition security and women’s health and wellbeing, as well as to organize women into associations to market their arts and crafts, utilizing natural fibers harvested and propagated from their local environments.
Save PNG is completing a cultural centre with demonstrated traditional food system gardens integrated with permaculture and agro-ecological principles. They are also running small trainings with women to help them to form associations to market their local arts and crafts and to create marketable natural fibre products.
The aim of these projects is to ensure that communities are food and nutrition secure. and that they are planting a wide variety of traditional and Indigenous food plants to ensure that their diets are diverse and nutritious. This is also providing a pathway for women to expose their talents in arts and crafts to be able to make an added income to supplement their farming activities. The natural fibres and dyes used to create their Bilum (traditional arts and crafts) will also be propagated in the community to ensure that these materials are produced sustainably.
Women in PNG holding the bills they have woven and will sell in local markets
Promoting health and safety in Samoa
The Samoa Social Welfare Fesoasoani Trust (SSWEFT) is working directly with the chiefs of two communities to raise awareness and provide hygienic assistance to vulnerable members of the community during the pandemic. In this joint venture with the PPP, SSWEFT has been able to visit selected families needing assistance as they are adults that are looked after by either a family member with a disability or a mother tending to the needs of an adult child. SSWEFT aims to offer support to these families as they often do not want to be a burden on their communities; with this initiative they are able to receive invaluable support they may not have otherwise felt comfortable asking for.
Delivering support packages to elders in Samoa
Your generous donations towards the Pacific Resilience Fund have allowed Loreto School in Levuka, Fiji to build stronger and modernized school buildings, Wan Smol Bag in Port Vila, Vanuatu to reconfigure existing buildings into disaster evacuation spaces (and create new spaces for youth arts programming in the process), and the Erromango Cultural Association in Erromango, Vanuatu to increase food security during disasters by training community members in traditional food preservation methods.
The Pacific Resilience Fund, supported through the generosity of people like you, is directly available to South Pacific communities to invest in their resilience as they choose to define it.
URGENT APPEAL – PPP has just issued an urgent fundraising appeal to help respond to COVID and Cyclone Harold. Read more and contribute HERE