Human rights organisation, Brown Girl Woke (BGW) are excited to launch a collection of videos made from their village projects linking the gender impact of climate change to gender based violence (GBV).

BGW founder and president, Doris Tulifau, has been at the forefront in taking this message out to the local communities and shared her views on their project which is nearing its end.

“Brown Girl Woke does a lot of work on all three sided themes gender, gender based violence and climate change,” she said.

“We wanted to go in the villages to get more of their expertise on what we do culturally to prepare for climate change disasters and also if they knew the statistics on GBV during climate change disasters and if they understood gender gap when it comes to disasters. Why are women and children more affected by climate change.” 

The invaluable participation and willingness of the community to work alongside BGW has been great in achieving what they set out for.

“The villages have great referral pathways. We asked Red Cross Samoa to come in to help us with this section because they are in the frontline for villages during disasters and emergencies," Ms. Tulifau said. 

"They were able to train our staff, especially our youth leader Jocelynette Leilua who was able to make great progress in talking to villages on making pathways and although they might know through oratory, we need to write it down to teach the next generation. We are thankful to the Red Cross and Trisco for training us.”

The videos will help with sharing their message and creating awareness of the project.

“The video with Samoa grassroots is to start conversations at home on climate change preparedness, gender and GBV during disasters. We want to change the statistic that women and children are 14 times more affected by disasters than men. This means going into villages and sharing solutions,” she added.