Solomon Islands Community Capacity and Sustainability Development Project

Sharing the toil

How do you get women excited about building a better walkway to the toilet?
Simple – organise them into teams and turn it into a competition!
Sulufou is an artificial island off North East Malaita, Solomon Islands. The women’s toilet is perched about 20 metres off the island. Putting the environmental concerns aside for a moment, the women have repeatedly expressed concern about the walkway to the toilet – a series of logs precariously balancing on timber scaffolding.

IWDA’s facilitator, Silvia, decided to initiate action to address the situation. She raised the issue at one of the regular women’s group meetings and together the group hatched a plan to build a stone walkway. As the island comprises 5 tribes, it was agreed that each tribe would form a team and would be responsible for building a section of the walkway out to the toilet. Their menfolk have pitched in to help out with some of the backbreaking labour. It is serious work, a hard slog, but there’s a sense of pride and camaraderie in that each tribe is relying on good work of the other tribe to ensure that the structure is sound. The women have not asked IWDA for any financial support, they have organised all the help they needed with their community – they just needed encouragement and leadership.

The Solomon Islands Community Capacity and Sustainability Development Project (CCSD) is a joint initiative of IWDA, Live & Learn Environmental Education and APHEDA-Union Aid Abroad, funded by AusAID.

This project has finished.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 10th, 2006 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Solomon Islands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.