Merewai is a stay-at-home wife and mother of five beautiful children in rural Fiji. She is an enthusiastic participant of Project Talitha training through Mary MacKillop Today’s partner, Ola Fou Fiji.
Supporting women in various provinces in Fiji, this project aims to train young women in building leadership skills, financial literacy, and mentoring capabilities. The training is focused on finding the “leader within”, helping young women build the confidence to have a voice in decisions within their community. For many women in these rural areas, creating income for their families is not easy but it is vitally important.
Merewai lives in a remote village in the West province of Fiji, and is isolated from other people and basic commodities such as safe water and electricity. Her husband works as a truck driver for a company near town. For the majority of the week, Merewai and her children are left alone in their home until her husband returns home on Fridays.
As a family, they grow many crops around their home which Merewai harvests every Thursday and prepares to sell every Friday and Saturday to help support her family.
When she’s able to go to town to sell crops in the market, she needs to buy and carry enough water to last the entire week for all her children while her husband is away. As you can imagine, this is a significant task.
Amidst these challenges, Merewai still finds time to attend the Project Talitha training made available through your generous support. She has big dreams and understands the training and activities provided are a key part of making these dreams come true.
Merewai loves to sew.
“In where I live, in the nearby villages, there is no one that does this. If we have anything that needs to be sewn, we have to take it to the tailors in town where it costs a lot plus transport cost, but if I have it here then it would be a lighter cost for people to pay,” says Merewai.
She sees the opportunity to be the go-to seamstress in her village and desires to make a name for herself as such. “We as ‘I Taukei’ (indigenous people) have a lot of functions and thus we organise a lot of ‘kalavatas’ (same dress codes and colours) for these functions and this requires the services of a tailor.” This ensures she will always have a market for her business for these functions as well as other needs for her community.
Merewai uses the land in her home village to plant ‘voivoi’ (pandanus plants), a plant she will use to weave mats for the community. She states, “Mats these days in Fiji are very expensive to buy but it is needed for all of our I Taukei functions.”
With the extra income from her sewing, Merewai can better provide for her family’s basic needs and save money to send her children to school.
Merewai is a very strong, hardworking, kind, and loving mother to her children. She has a strong willpower to pursue the goals she has set for herself and her family.
We thank you for being a pivotal part in giving Merewai and other women like her the opportunity to make their dreams a reality.
Women’s Leadership in Rural Fiji receives support from the Australian Government through the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP).
