Vika’s passion for development work in Fiji

Jan. 30 – It’s my first day with SPBD Fiji. I was greeted warmly and had a brief chat with Rico, SPBD Fiji’s general manager. Then, Rico introduced me to Vika, the Centre Manager who I will be spending most of my time with in visiting villages where SPBD has its microfinance operations.

Vika is a centre manager (CM) from our partner, South Pacific Business Development (SPBD) in Fiji. A Centre Manager is the one who organizes groups of women in the villages, trains them and facilitates for them to access SPBD’s financial services – micro-loans, savings, insurance, and capacity building initiatives. Vika’s usual routine is travelling out to the villages every week to meet with the village group (which are called “centres”). Being committed to help empower the women in her centres, she carries along with her a backpack that contains all the centre’s records, an LCD projector, a laptop and some flipchart papers just in case the village doesn’t have electricity. Vika is one of the CM’s who delivers the small business training mini-sessions. Though it is not compulsory for them to do it, she believes that doing it with the women in her centres helps them improve their lives.

“I love my work. Here, I get to do a lot of things — I meet a lot of people, go out in the communities, I do training, and sometimes, I’m a bailiff. Sometimes tiring yet satisfying.” — is what Vika says about how she loves her work as a CM. As a mother of 3 boys, she usually has to wake up early in the morning, get her children ready for school, prepare her husband’s things for work, and last is herself. She takes her youngest son to her sister who takes care of him, and off she goes to work.

In the first day I went along with her, we visited 4 villages — two of which are undergoing centre orientation sessions, and so they have not received their loans yet. In the other 2 villages, she is doing the centre meetings — where the women have been paying back their loans for almost 6 months now. We arrived back to the office close to 6 pm and she hurried to deposit the payments before she headed home. I wonder how she manages her time between the demands of motherhood and the demands of development work.

“It’s really passion. My husband asked me a few times to quit my job here in SPBD and look for something that’s not that demanding. He would sometimes get angry if I would go home late. But, I love doing this work and I find ways to balance my time between my role as a mother and wife, and my work.”

In the 2 days I spent with Vika, I had come to admire her enthusiasm, energy, and her determination in bringing development to the unemployed women in the rural areas in Fiji. And yes, even to the extent of going across the river (we did!!!), conquering her fear in riding a flatboat that uses a paddle and a lot of balancing — just to reach a village where SPBD’s services would mean a lot to the women there.

Indeed, I admire her.

Rose is the Training Program Manager and is usually based in the Philippines.