Community education: An essential dimension in the prevention of violence against women

This paper explores how global aid agendas impact NGO responsibility for Violence Against Women (VAW) community education programmes. VAW is a critical issue in the Pacific region. A reconfiguration of the NGO sector is taking place whereby larger NGOs receive more resources than smaller, more diverse NGOs. This paper examines a regional-national pattern whereby a Fiji-based NGO regional hub has become a source of VAW knowledge and resources. As a case study, the Vanuatu Women's Centre is an example of a national NGO accessing regional VAW resources to develop initiatives relevant to the Vanuatu context. One issue is whether the Vanuatu experience can be generalised to other Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs). Another issue is whether the specialised knowledge and skills generated by the regional hubs are at the expense of many locally-generated programmes that have previously characterised NGOs. This paper proposes that a community education perspective be applied to development programmes in PICTs.