Course helps women to help their community

Two  Papua New Guinea women participated in a leadership programme in Samoa recently.
Lilly Be’Soer and Sina Joe from Voice of Change took part in the five-day programme that was designed to give communities skills and leadership needed to positively change lives.
“I learned a lot about what others  are doing  in a similar field as we are working, so I take all this with me so we can stay connected and continue to share our experiences with  each other,” said  Be’Soer, a team leader  for  Voice  of  Change.
“It  made us look  deeper into  how we  can incorporate, add  value and adopt new tools in the way we work with our communities.”
Two  master facilitators travelled from the United Kingdom and Peru to lead the activities that involved conversations, creativities and plays, facilitation practice and peer-to-peer learning.
Participants  were shown ways  in which they could help their communities with youth employment, sustainable tourism, new ways of farming and other interests.
One of the organisers said that he was excited for those who attended the programme and was eager to see how the participant would do in their countries.
“The aim is to share knowledge with a cross-section of people working  with  the  communities  in the  hope  that  it  will  translate  into meaningful actions and positive  changes,”  Alatina  Ioelu  from small Business Enterprise Centre Samoa said.
The people who took part received certificates as facilitators and that would enable them to teach modules and methodologies to their own communities to create social change-makers, known as active citizens.
Samoa was the 52nd country to host the programme and the participants were from Tonga, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Fiji, Samoa and the Solomon Islands.
The programme will be monitored over the next nine months and the success will be measured on the social actions and social enterprises developed  by active citizens trained  by  the  facilitators.