During the Nadi and Lautoka lockdowns, Rise Beyond the Reef, a non-profit organisation had purchased crops from 28 households in Navilawa Village and 30 households in Abaca Village.
According to director and co-founder Janet Lotawa, these were then distributed to food insecure settlements in the Sabeto Valley and to vulnerable communities in Lautoka such as the Golden Age Home in Lautoka and Loloma Home in Nadi.
“Our focus is to promote circular economies,” she said.
“Remote communities tend to have greater crop abundance than urban and peri-urban communities.
“Remote communities also tend to have very limited formal economic inclusion and therefore do not have FNPF or other benefits that those closer to town have access to.”
These people were often more cash poor as Ms Lotawa stated they were severely affected after two major storms in the past six months and during the pandemic where the market value of their crops had dwindled.
“Through this basa (selling in the market) exchange we pay remote communities at village gates close to a retail price for their produce and it’s then provided to food insecure communities in urban/peri-urban areas.
“During the COVID-19 lockdown last year, we provided food rations to more than 350 remote families (more than 1400 dependents) in our partner communities in Ba and Ra because they were locked out of their markets from selling their crops.”
Rise Beyond the Reef spent about $20,000 on non-perishable food items.
Ms Lotawa said they thought about ways to consider extending this financial impact beyond large companies in Fiji and to source from communities as well as share that abundance down the line.
“It’s more nutritional, it’s benefiting more than just the supplier/recipient and it’s a way to think about increasing the impact with aid dollars.
“Not just during a pandemic, but also in disaster response.
“It’s a huge opportunity to help promote the innate abundance and resilience we have here in the Pacific.
“There are unique challenges rural and remote communities face year-round,” she said.
These challenges were said to have become heightened under pressure from pandemics or major climatic events.
“During the lockdown, our Ba partner communities are locked out of their primary market for basa, which is the Lautoka market.
“When they shift to other markets like Ba, the buying power is quite limited compared to Lautoka and Nadi.
“The Ba market overnight becomes flooded with crops from other interior communities who cannot reach the Nadi market such as Bukuya villagers.
“Our Ba district co-ordinator reported back that while Yakete women tried to sell at the Ba market this past weekend, their heaps of bananas that normally sell for $5 during the pandemic and $8 to $10 during non-pandemic times, they weren’t even able to move at $1 per heap this past weekend.
“Remote women generally spend 30 to 70 per cent of their gross income from basa on transport to and from the market.”
She said in this case, these people lost their money and could not afford the very basics on their list.
“They also return in debt to their carrier drivers due to unsuccessful sales.
“To assume rural and remote communities don’t have a need for cash is simply false.
“They too desire nappies, batteries and sugar just like those in town.
“It was revealed there was a lack of commitment and intentionality towards the inclusion of rural and remote communities in the financial opportunities or benefits of pandemic response and natural disaster response.
“The limitation for CSOs is the restriction on funding.
“We were fortunate that Fiji Women’s Fund is willing and committed to providing flexible support.
“The aid sector and government would always have a finite amount of resources to work with.
“As organisations, we should see our role and build our expertise in how to maximise the impact of those resources on the
ground.
“It’s not easy to run operations in lockdown zones, but is possible if we invest long-term in community-based leaders like our district and village coordinator networks and relationships with local districts and provincial offices.”
According Ms Lotawa their Economic and Leadership Development program was a full value and supply chain program led by rural remote women and their communities with whom the organisation partnered with.
“We use economic development as a tool or vessel to stay and work with communities long-term. To help development, new leadership opportunities for women and to back that up with steady market.
“We provide product design, support paid leadership roles for women in their communities, support ongoing training and quality control then we purchase goods at village gate following a fair trade pricing model.
“This enables women to earn a higher return on their products than they do via traditional markets for their crops.
“We manage the order fulfilment both locally and through e-commerce channels.
“A portion of the product sales help to support the operations of our program, but we operate at a deficit which we fill through fundraising and grants.”
The organisation started buying in 2014 with just three villages in Ba. Ms Lotawa said it had grown rapidly over time based on their market expansion.
“To date, women have earned more than $600,000 through our program.”
Other impacts were said to include the promotion and sustaining of traditional knowledge, increased skill production base, new leadership opportunities for women in their communities, and successful and evergrowing market penetration into the formal sector for Fiji’s remote women, as well as building trust over time to address harmful norms around gender with men and women in their communities.
Last year was a difficult year for the organisation as the tourism market closures happened so suddenly.
According to Ms Lotawa their secondary market of conferences and events was also highly impacted.
“We focused on redesigning our e-commerce platform and strategy – thanks to the flexible support of Oxfam and Urgent Action
Fund Asia and the Pacific – and quickly retraining women in our program on products suited for online trends during the pandemic and beyond.
“The grinding work to survive and pivot last year is starting to pay off. We’ve been able to take three communities off our waitlist so far this year that were waiting for more than two years.
“As our market grows, so does our capacity to work with more women.”
Last week, through the grants from the Fiji Women’s Fund our grants, Rise Beyond the Reef bought $6000 worth of vegetables
from artisans in the mountain regions of Ba.
This grant was through the funding from the Australian Humanitarian Partnership (AHP) given to grantees to help pivot to
COVID-19 response and disaster recovery.
