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Oxfam Country Representative Anthea Toka. Photo: Martin Wurt/OxfamAUS
Life for Vanuatu's young people is not without its challenges, explains Oxfam Australia's Country Representative, Anthea Toka.
Young people in Vanuatu can be seen to be like the tools of chiefs and leaders in the community. If there’s something that needs to be done, the chiefs or community leaders will tell the young people to do this, to do that – they’re not seen as people who can contribute to society.
So a lot of young people don't feel they're part of the community or that they have control over their own lives. They’re not part of the decision-making process. And in this setting, girls are two steps under because the boys at some point come up and take part in this process. But the girls, when they stand up and say something or make a contribution, they're told 'you’re just a woman'.
Oxfam has stepped into this picture to help young people build their confidence, give them opportunities to express themselves, make them feel they are valuable and then make their own decisions. Once their confidence builds, then we encourage them to work within the community structure, to put themselves in the life of that community.
That’s what the projects are about that we're supporting in Pentecost, an island in the north of Vanuatu. Oxfam Australia is supporting the Haulua Youth Centre here with the help of our local partner organisation, Wan Smolbag. With this youth centre, there's a space where young people can go and be free to express themselves. In a village setting you have a 'nakamal’ - this is the chiefs' or men’s meeting centre, the women have their organisations and church, but you don’t have a place for youth to go.
With the help of Wan Smolbag we’ve set up this youth centre where there’s information on a lot of issues that face young people such as reproductive health and substance abuse. At the centre, young people also take part in workshops – a model that Wan Smolbag uses a lot. You have boys and girls working together to discuss and debate issues. Especially for young girls, outside of this space, they don’t have a chance to stand up and express themselves; here they're given an opportunity to develop their ideas and thoughts on how to argue and make statements.
The success is having them show the rest of the community – the older chiefs, the older people – that young people can do something on their own. They are a useful group; that not only can they sit and wait for instructions to be given but they have the strength to carry out work on their own.
This centre has been running for almost two years – the impact of that is that the respect for young people, for women in particular, is growing. A lot of young people have taken part in the centre's workshops and have built up their confidence. The older people are seeing this confidence, they’re seeing this level of responsibility and more and more the elders are accepting young people into other committees – development committees in the village, the church committee, the youth committee, village decision-making bodies. So the centre has provided a place where the older people can see that okay, young people are doing things, they are organising, they have got skills and they can contribute to life in the community.