Role modelling: promoting child development in the PacificThe day starts early for Adi Davila Toganivalu. She is up at 5:30 a.m. and into her car for the 90-minute commute to the UNICEF office in Suva, Fiji’s capital. When she returns to her farm in the evening, the sun has long since set. It’s a schedule that the 60-year-old grandmother takes in her stride. When she retires from UNICEF in a year’s time, she plans to run a flower-selling business and do some voluntary work on the side. It was in 1993 that Davila, who is Fijian, came across an advert for a job with UNICEF in the field of education. It appealed to her, so she applied. Her curriculum vitae showed a Masters degree in education from Australia as well as a diploma in early childhood education. It also listed years of experience as a pre-school teacher and university lecturer. Face-to-face Davila is equally impressive. Warm and outgoing, she’s articulate, observant, meticulous about her work and a stickler for detail. It is no surprise she got the job. “Working for UNICEF has shown me education in a broad context,” she says. “Children need to be loved and cared for and teachers have got to become a role model.” She herself is a role model. As the UNICEF education officer, she piloted a scheme which brought a whole new dimension of creativity and dynamism to the classroom. Davila and her team chose to try out the ‘child-friendly school project’ on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu because of its remoteness and elevated school drop-out rates. The idea was to make teaching more exciting, stimulating and challenging for children. And it worked. Once the changes started, children in Tanna had to be coaxed to leave school after classes finished because they wanted to stick around and help their teachers put pictures up and decorate. “And the teachers even came in on weekends,” Davila says. “Classrooms that were dull, drab and colourless before were being transformed into attractive and lively learning places for both students and teachers,” she says. Parents were really pleased.” So successful was the experiment that the child-friendly approach has been applied to primary schools in many other Pacific islands – with the help of UNICEF partners. “I’m only doing UNICEF’s work,” Davila says of her role in pioneering the ground-breaking scheme. “Everyone has different ways of doing things and if someone or something were to change (the project) tomorrow, why not?” she says in a pragmatic, down-to-earth manner. “As long as there’s a good reason to do so.” Davila’s husband died in a road accident in 1987, leaving her to single-handedly raise their five children. The youngest was only in first grade at the time. Her eldest child, a daughter who is now 35, was born with multiple disabilities and needs full-time care and close monitoring. Davila spent 16 years at home looking after her first-born, who she describes as “happy and loving” and who lives at the farm. Even when she was a full-time mum, the educationalist in her always shone through. Which could be why, she believes, none of her offspring have chosen a career that involves working with children. “They always felt that as their mother, I was always a teacher, even at home, often reminding them how to do things right and behave properly,” she says. “They often used to say, ‘Mum, I’m your child, not your pupil’!” During that period, she still kept up her contacts, signing up as a volunteer with the Fiji Pre-school Association, attending annual conferences and talking to parents about the importance of early education for their children. Now that her youngest daughter has graduated from university in Australia, “that’s the end of my responsibility as far as educating my children,” she says. All of her offspring live in Fiji and while none appear keen to follow in her footsteps, they are immensely proud that their mother works for UNICEF. In 2003, she changed jobs to specialize in what UNICEF calls early childhood, which covers all aspects of a child’s physical and emotional development. Davila spends most of her time in close liaison with three field offices: Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Kiribati. These are just specks on a map for most of us, exotic tropical islands peppered with Pacific Ocean mystique. For her, they are the real test ground of development where UNICEF helps to build schools, buy equipment, train pre-school teachers and much more. Her eyes light up when she talks about field missions, which she calls the best part of her job. “Each place is different, and you’re brought down to earth. We often sit and plan at headquarters, but the real work is out there in the communities,” she says. She also loves to meet the local partners that UNICEF works with at grass-roots level. Each visit leaves its own taste and gives rise to its own tales, but she has particularly warm memories of a 10-day trip she took to the island of Ambrym, in North Vanuatu. It was to assist an early childhood workshop training for teachers. “I really appreciated that visit because I experienced the hardships these people face on a daily basis. We ate together, slept in the same house, and were part of the community during the entire training.” On Ambrym, piped water was not available so participants had to carry buckets of water from the few functioning communal taps or streams in the village to the community where the workshop was taking place, some distance away. The only modes of transport are by foot and boat. “This trip really made me realize that we do work with real people and children who do not take for granted the things we often do. I came away thinking that we all achieved something important together.” The UNICEF office in Fiji, where about 25 staff work, occupies two floors of a five-story building. “We have a beautiful view of the Suva harbour, so we have no complaints about where we’re located,” Davila says. On display in the conference rooms are artifacts – mats, shells, necklaces and plaited handbags – collected from the many visits made in the region. On field trips Davila normally dons the traditional sulu (sarong), which is long and covers the legs. “Usually when I have to run a community workshop, I always like to wear a sulu. I do not want to make people feel uncomfortable and I feel that wearing it is a sign of respect as I also see parents,” she says. At Fiji’s Adi Cakobau boarding school where she spent six “wonderful” years as a secondary school pupil, there was a strong component of Fijian culture. “We made our costumes, sang, did the meke (Fijian women’s dance) and we used to stencil tapa cloth (made from the bark of a tree). At this school, she learnt how to garden, prune plants – in short, how to tend to herself and her environment. It was the best preparation she ever had for dealing with life’s challenges. “We talk about life skills, but at the school those things were part and parcel of our daily routine, so you could survive anywhere.” Davila expects not just to survive but to thrive when she takes on the tasks of growing fruits, vegetables and especially flowers on her six-acre homestead. She’s excited about the future, but at the same time sad to leave UNICEF and the staff she’s developed strong emotional ties with over the years. How would she like to be thought of by her colleagues? “The legacy I leave behind is to make sure that I do my work well now, so the people who come after me can continue to build on it,” she sums up succinctly. UNICEF Pacific: The evolution of early childhood and education programmes In the 1980s and 1990s, UNICEF focused mainly on early childhood education projects. In 2000, it moved towards supporting primary education, particularly in the area of quality learning in schools. The child-friendly schools (CFS) project is geared to improving the quality of school learning and improving partnerships in the education of children in the Pacific. The CFS project is running successfully in Vanuatu. The initiative started in the Solomon Islands in 2004 and Kiribati has expressed an interest in the child-friendly approach. In 2003, UNICEF opened field offices in three priority countries: Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Kiribati. This has made follow-up and monitoring of education and health projects in the field easier, although operational costs in rural provinces are high.
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