Matavale Women’s Association wins WPHFUND award

Matavale Women’s Association Project Manager, Ellen Paieke, has been awarded the Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund, WPHF and Women Have Wings winners of the 2022 Civil Society Organisations Peer Learning Awards.

The announcement was made this week after a competitive selection among WPHF CSOs globally.

This initiative aims to recognise the efforts of ten women leaders engaged in peace and humanitarian response, each one representing one civil society organisation and to foster peer learning and networking between ten CSOs engaged in peace and humanitarian response.

Each tandem will develop joint activities to enhance the capacities of their staff members through field visits, training, and advocacy actions, online and on the ground.

Other winners are from CSO members in Haiti, Mali and Vanuatu.

As part of the award, Ms Paieke will travel to Vanuatu later in the year and together with Donackly Bune from Santo Sunset Women’s Environment Network (SSWEN), will visit some communities in Vanuatu to get first-hand information on the network’s priority areas of intervention, such as women’s role in food security, community engagement, and disaster preparedness and response.

Both CSOs will conduct field visits to exchange good practices on project implementation and financial management.

Ellen Paieke is currently the Honiara’s “Outstanding women”, a project funded by the United Nations Development Programme.

Ms Paieke’s organisation, the Matavale Women’s Association, is implementing food security projects and supporting women to produce crops that will be stored to face hunger during the critical weeks after cyclones in West Makira.

MWA also trains women in rural areas to run profitable businesses and supports local communities to set up Community Disaster Committees to learn about weather conditions on a weekly basis.