The woman they call Amelia Rokotuivuna
WILL the real Amelia Rokotuivuna please stand up? Her critics called her aggressive, anti-white, a radical, a feminist and a breaker of the Fijian tradition.
Those who knew her and the work she did would understand that Rokotuivuna was a kind, sympathetic, tolerant person of all races and a huge supporter of women’s rights.
This was reported in The Fiji Times on January 22, 1977.
Ms Rokotuivana was born at Vatukarasa village up in Verata, Tailevu, in 1941.
She spent most of her childhood at Vatukoula where her father was a cook at the mines.
At 12 years old, she attended Adi Cakohau School and stayed there until 1960 before she went to the Fiji School of Medicine.
Her weakness in physics and chemistry had put an end to a promising medical career which saw her join the Fiji Broadcasting Commission as a panel controller, until 1963.
At that time the Fiji Young Women’s Christian Association had her going about two years and senior YMCA members Anne Walker and Ruth Lechte were already installed in the first floor of the Old Suva Town Hall running teams of unruly pre-scholars and teenagers through kindergarten class and coffee clubs.
Ms Lechte the general secretary needed an assistant and Amelia was recommended for the job.
"I had always wanted to do some sort of community work put I had not managed to get to university or into agriculture college to do field work and the welfare department was then taking only nurses or teachers on their staff," she said.
She took the job and turned her hand to typing, running classes, being the receptionist, coping with youngsters on pun-pun (petrol sniffing) and firmly ejecting the occasional drunk.
In 1965 she went to Swansea University College in Britain on a British technical assistance scholarship to do a two-year course in social administration, a general course covering everything from social case work to politics and economics.
She returned in 1967 to find plans well under way for a YWCA building in Suva and the Old Town Hall building was busting at the seams with members, classes, club programs and craft industries.
In 1968 she became general secretary of the Lautoka YWCA. In 1970 she was asked to come back to Suva.
The new building was under construction and the YWCA Board of Directors wanted her to train as national executive director to eventually replace Ms Lechte.
She went for nine months of training and did 10-months in Canada in 1971 before returning in April, 1972.
Anne Walker left then, and Ms Lechte went in 1973 become World YWCA representative in the Pacific based at Lautoka.
A team of experts from Canada came to help
Ms Rokotuivuna shift into their new Community Resource Centre in Sukuna Park.
The centre was built basically on promises and $527,000 raised by the people of Fiji.
With that as a start the Fiji Government gave $20,000 from a British aid grant and overseas Governments and organisations came good with the remainder.
Ms Rokotuivuna ran the daily operations and the decisions were taken by committees branches and national boards - about 50 ordinary women with no special business or administrative talents.
"They have to balance personal and household budgets all their lives - there is no need for them to be frightened of the big money."
There were about 2000 paid up members of the organisation, but about twice that may benefit from its many programmes, classes and clubs.
About 500 people a day from young school leavers to elderly women had always been interested in learning or teaching new skills passed through the YWCA building daily.
"I think one of the difficulties is that the community has never been able to place us -Europeans accuse us of being anti-white, Fijians of going against traditional ways and Indians of being a church organisation.