Tongan women activist work to be highlighted in book

Transcript

A celebrated American photojournalist is to feature young Tongan women working to address domestic violence in a new book highlighting female activists around the world.  

Paola Gianturco spent a week in Tonga, observing six people involved in the Talitha Development Project.

Ms Gianturco told Koro Vaka'uta her book, scheduled for 2017 release, will feature activists from 15 countries, including Tonga and New Zealand.

PAOLO GIANTURCO: This book focuses on groups of activist girls ages 10 to 18. Although they might seem young they are doing brilliant work around the world. Course the Talitha project which is doing work on domestic violence including violence against children is doing brilliant work in that particular area. The book will focus on groups of girls that are working on completely different kinds of issues. A group for instance in Indonesia is working on environmental issues they are called bye-bye plastic bag girls because they hope that plastic bags will be banned on the island of Bali. The girls in Malawi are working to stop child marriage. The parliament has now disallowed child marriage, so ages 10 to 18 can be very effective. And they certainly are being effective in Tonga.

KORO VAKAUTA: All over the world but particularly in Tonga are they having a tangible impact in their countries?

PG: Its difficult to measure what is happening in Tonga because of course those are issues that will probably require a long time to change. But the number of callers and texters who respond to the radio show that the girls run was impressive. It is a show which in order to protect the identity of the kids who call in they take the calls during the musical breaks in the show and receive texts. The two girls who were hosting essentially rephrase the stories but they have quite a following. Perhaps in an hour they may have as many as 28 texts or calls from children who want to talk about the issues.

KV: Your latest project the final product will be titled wonder girls, what do you want to achieve?

PG: Oh I have many dreams for this book. One is girls all over the world will discover what other girls are doing and realise how effective they can be about the issues they are passionate about. So I hope to kindle new activism among girls.  Another thing I hope the book will do is encourage people to understand each other more completely. And another thing is because my co-author is my ten year old grand-daughter. I am hoping that it will encourage multi-generational communication. Because I think not only do we need to understand each other cross culturally but additionally across generations.