Anglican Communion News Service

“Iumi go fowad tugeta” - travelling forward together - was the strategy agreed at the Anglican Alliance’s Pacific consultation which closed today.

Climate change and youth empowerment were the priorities in the strategy which participants from across the Pacific agreed to take back to their provinces.

The five day consultation was held at the home of the Sisters of the Church, outside Honiara in the Solomon Islands, and included a field visit to a refuge for women fleeing domestic violence, St Luke’s college, and the centre for the Melanesian Brothers. It was hosted jointly by the Anglican Church of Melanesia and the Anglican Alliance.

“Iumi go fowod tugeta” included proposals to:

• Establish a part-time facilitator supported by a regional steering group to carry forward the mission to work in the Pacific for a world free of poverty and injustice. The steering group would include women and youth representatives, and would also work with Anglican agencies.
• Prioritise climate change and youth empowerment. In climate change the Pacific would focus on survival, adaptation, impact of climate change on food security, and forced migration of climate change refugees. Youth empowerment would focus on violence towards young women and gang culture.
• Highlight the role of the church in delivering peace and reconciliation, especially the role of the Melanesian Brothers during the ethnic unrest in the Solomon Islands.
• Advocate for action by the G20 to end the scandal of 900 million hungry people: the Anglican Alliance’s food advocacy pack for World Food Day on October 16^th was launched at the consultation.

The meeting received powerful presentations on the impact of climate change on the Pacific islands.

Maina Talia, from Tuvalu, described the devastation caused by king tides on his island, with the sea destroying homes and crops on the atoll. Tackling climate change was a matter of survival, he said.

And Father Patteson Worek, of the Church of Melanesia, set out the work the church was doing to help people adapt to climate change by different farming methods and crops.

The participants also paid tribute to George Kiriau, General Secretary of ACOM who will be retiring later this year, and who invited the Anglican Alliance to hold its consultation in the Solomon Islands.

The decision to include violence against young women in the work on youth empowerment came after the consultation's field visit to the Christian Care Centre, run by Sister Doreen of the Community of Sisters of the Church. The centre provides a refuge for women and children who have suffered domestic violence, works with police and courts over prosecutions for violence, and on counselling services for perpetrators.

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