ONE of the best ways to find solutions to global issues is engaging citizens to take actions for their communities’ wellbeing.
In order to get the ball rolling, the TogetherWe Project spearheaded by its co-executive director, Gail Davis and the TogetherWe Project global team worked tirelessly in creating a pilot within four countries representing four different continents – Fiji included.
The team has brought together citizens within the four piloted countries by guiding them to take individual and collective actions for their communities’ wellbeing and restoring their ecosystem.
The TogetherWe Project team provides support and guidance to connect those dots on how to navigate through the issues and create solutions that benefit them and their families. The TogetherWe Project team developed a model to achieve this worldwide.
They chose Fiji as one of the four piloted countries after Mrs Davis attended one of the meetings she participates in daily at the United Nations.
It was during this meeting, focusing on oceans and biodiversity that Mrs Davis heard one of the ministers from the Small Island Developed States speak on the importance of the international community understanding the effects climate change has on the state of SID’s biodiversity, food and economics.
Mrs Davis further felt it was important Fiji and SIDS were represented to the world as examples of what’s happening on the planet with reference to climate change.
She felt Fiji was an island affected by climate change daily with tourism, economy and the ability to have a strong infrastructure for technology.
The TogetherWe Project team, they understood that people, who called the Pacific Island region their home, understood their ecosystem better than anyone in the world.
With Fiji in particular, the team felt that while they had a voice, their team could provide them with the support of moving from their voice to solutions; and the ways in which to apply those solutions for their own economic expansion and to benefit their ecosystem.
“I felt a yearning in my stomach that this was right, working with Fiji and other SIDS with a methodology of actions to achieve the United Nations 2030 Agenda, which encompasses the UN Sustainable Development Goals because if Fiji was included as part of this methodology, then other countries would realise they would be able to do the same thing,” Mrs. Davis said.
One of the areas that the TogetherWe Project team and Fiji’s stakeholders have identified was that Fijians had access to a healthy way of eating.
With this knowledge, the team provided training in agriculture that could possibly lead to the entire country adapting to utilising the training method that was introduced as a way of sustainably growing food.
Another area is where the TogetherWe Project team supporing one of the Fijian civil society organisation, which supports women fishermen providing a sustainable income and food for their family by having an education institution offer support to add staffing to the organisation itself.
This came out of many training sessions with the organisation to identify their needs through a unique engagement model developed by the TogetherWe Project team.
These two results are but a small fraction of what the TogetherWe Project team has in store working with Fiji and the world.
The team found that by working with the countries, they were able to provide a lens in which the countries were able to view themselves.
The team engaged the Fijian community in capacity building, organisational development and more. “Of course, when providing the opportunity to see through the lens of the TogetherWe Project team’s guidance, the stakeholders and citizens within the countries would become excited and want to focus on one particular aspect,” the team said.
“Connecting the world with what’s important to them is not a one size fits all. We must follow through on the “entire” model we are developing and how it connects the country within itself.
“If it was that easy for any group of people to come together and provide not just a quality of life, but one they love; the world would be perfect, but human nature at times gets in the way. The model developed by the team can be retrofitted to fit every country’s needs.”
Mrs Davis added that the only way the project was successful and moved forward was if Fijian citizens experience economic growth, well-being and support for restoring their country’s ecosystems themselves.
She said with their team’s support, people from other communities could work together for a better world.
