Urban councils in Bougainville could soon become Centres for Excellence for gender in local government, thank to a team from CLGF Pacific which is on a two week scoping mission to Bougainville to implement part of a programme to strengthen the rights and opportunities for women and girls in the Pacific.  CLGF Pacific is a lead partner responsible for the implementation of the local government component of the Pacific FLOW program. The FLOW programme - Funding Leadership and Opportunities for Women- is a new fund initiated by the Dutch Foreign Ministry to strengthen the rights and opportunities for women and girls worldwide.

The Pacific FLOW Program is a four year (2012-2015) multi-country programme in the Pacific managed by the International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA), a not-for-profit civil society organisation based in Australia. The Program works with a wide range of Pacific regional and local partners to increase women’s civil and political leadership in Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Bougainville. The Program focuses on four outcomes: increasing women’s civil society engagement and representation, mobilising young women to participate in decision-making, increasing gender equality commitments at the local government level and increasing voter willingness and community support for women in leadership positions.

A core aim of the current CLGF mission is to introduce the idea of using urban councils in Bougainville as Centres of Excellence (COE’s) for Gender in Local Government. This will involve providing sustained support to the Buka and Arawa Urban Councils to mainstream gender into their policies, programs and service delivery through technical support, on-the-job training, and council-to-council technical twinning with PNG Urban LLGs and Australian Councils stakeholders when they travel to Arawa next week.

“Since arriving in Buka we have received great support for the FLOW programme from our partners and the public, said CLGF Pacific Regional Programs Manager Megan Praeger.

“The work will build on experience that CLGF Pacific has gained over several years working at the local government level in adapting and implementing gender training across the Pacific region using the UN-Habitat Gender in Local Government Toolkit and the PNG Good Practice Scheme involving council-to-council twinning between Urban LLGs and Australian councils. It has arisen from the realisation that the only way to make a difference at the local level is to start council by council. The Pacific FLOW Program aims to target eight councils across Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Bougainville for the pilot phases of the COEs,” she explained.

The CLGF scoping team is visiting the region’s main administrative centre of Buka and will also travel to Arawa in the southern part of the country. The team, comprising Megan Praeger, Regional Programs Coordinator, and Miriam Rees, Communications and Research Officer, CLGF Pacific,  has met with the Division of Local Level Government for Bougainville, the Minister for Local Government Hon. Rev Joseph Nopei and the Minister for Community Development, Hon. Melchoir Dare. The team has also been working with officers of Buka Urban Council, women representatives from the Councils of Elders as well as the Bougainville Women’s Federation (BWF).