Group promote gender equality through drama

By PISAI GUMAR
THROUGH drama, the Lae-based Seeds theatre group is promoting gender equality and an end to violence against women in the city.
The community-based organisation’s objective is to help people understand that domestic violence is a crime and a breach of basic human rights.
The group tries to educate and let people know there were avenues for counselling in dealing with the issue.
Based in ward 2, of the Ahi local level government, the group promotes an end to violence against women in Lae district by taking its drama and skits–based awareness campaigns to villages and settlements.
So far the group has performed in Sipaia, Yanga, Bumbu, Gunange and the Gravel areas.
It boasts a line-up of 42 plays that had been performed in areas around Ahi and the Lae urban LLG this year.
The group is sponsored by Fiji-based United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UNwomen).
Seeds is one of the five groups in the country undertaking the initiative.
The other groups are the Tapiok women’s group of Chimbu, Morobe Literacy Volunteers, Sexual Violence Unit of Port Moresby and Young Women’s Christian Association of Chimbu.
Group project director Willie Doaemo acknowledged UNwomen for recognising community-based organisations like Seeds.
Doaemo said UNwomen had engaged 20 people as part of a capacity-building programme aimed at developing individuals in organisations to help end violence against women.
Under the leadership of Sam Solomon Sommi, the group has contributed to educating communities by dramatising cross- cutting issues in HIV/AIDS, environment, tuberculosis and health generally.
In addition, the group is sponsored by the Electoral Commission to promote the limited preferential voting system that would be used in the June general election.
 “Domestic violence is a disease that threatens the fabric of our family and society, affecting integral human development and of which many people become victims without knowing where to seek help,” Sommi said.
“It’s not about breaking up marriages or making motherless or fatherless children but to guide the victim to find a lasting solution to domestic violence and to educate perpetrators to change for the better,” Doaemo said.