Community Outreach

One of the very cool parts of my job is being able to join the RAMSI community outreach teams and travel to different communities to talk about the work of RAMSI.Usually the team consists of some army,some police and civilian advisors like myself. We generally just explain the work of RAMSI and what we do in our area and then listen and respond to the issues and concerns of the community.

Today I joined an outreach team who travelled to West Guadacanal -the far end of the province we live on. Much to Carl's envy we travelled 20 minutes by helicopter over fabulous forests and gorgeous coastlines to get to a community called Lambi. The team is usually made up of people from a mixture of countries -today we had Aussie army guys and police from PNG and Samoa and of course a kiwi advisor. My inenviable position is to explain the work of the Ministry of Finance and Treasury in pidgin. I'm slowly getting better at it and really enjoy the interaction with the crowd. Even those who live in remote locations are very well informed from listening to the national radio and are not afraid of asking curly questions

Often there is a level of tension between RAMSI and the Honiara political arena due to ongoing challenges of sovereignty and partnership, so its great to get out into communities where people have very real memories of what life was like - the dangers and tensions that existed between provinces - before RAMSI arrived. There is huge popular support for the work.

It was a great day - I love meeting and talking to the women and kids and I couldn't help thinking to myself that despite the frustrations and challenges at work there are parts of my job that are very cool!!!!!