K170,000 to fight violence in Morobe

 THE Angau Family Support Centre (FSC) in Lae, Morobe province, has been awarded a grant of K170,000 for a project to end violence against women and girls.

The grant was provided by the UN Women’s Pacific regional Ending Violence Against Women (EVAW) facility fund.

The funds would be used for medical and psychological care for victims and survivors of family violence and to develop the existing database system for recording cases of gender-based violence in Lae. 

Angau FSC will be able to access UN Women’s technical assistance and capacity building opportunities by the EVAW fund in areas such as primary prevention, human rights-based approaches to ending violence, organisation and project management, advocacy and lobbying and further support and mentoring in providing services to survivors of violence. 

Project coordinator Bessie Maruia, on behalf of PNG-based UN Women country programme manager Dr Jeffrey Buchanan, thanked AusAID for its continued support in ending violence against women and girls through the Pacific fund. 

Maruia also thanked Medecins Sans Frontieres for its outstanding efforts in providing much-needed medical and psycho-social support to victims and survivors of violence, especially women and children in Lae. 

She added that more funding would be required to continue a “well-functioning and positive model” of the family support centre.