Learning experience for young Laddpeter
IN the one month she has spent at the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC) and the training she has received, Josephine Laddpeter is determined to change the way she interacts with her four younger siblings.
She does not want them to be subjected to the domestic violence and abuse she experienced and witnessed as a child.
The 22-year-old University of the South Pacific special and inclusive education student joined the centre this month after completing a one-week gender training and three-week on-the-job training.
She said in that brief time she had learnt a lot.
“During the training, I heard a lot of terms and ideas being discussed for the first time and did not really know what they meant,” she said.
“But when I came to the centre and witnessed how the counsellors worked with the survivors, it all made sense.
“It was emotional seeing women from different backgrounds come to the centre and the issues they were facing and how the counsellors would remain calm and firm and they were not biased or judgmental.
“It’s amazing to see how the counsellors are not just there to counsel them, they live the survivors’ reality, what they went through — all the things that they felt — the hurt and the pain.
“They go through the experience with them and it really touched me because of what I witnessed as a child. The verbal and physical abuse that happened not only at home but within the community which my siblings and I accepted as the norm.
“Now, with all the training, I better understand how wrong it is and how we internalise those beatings and the swearing — it was an eye-opener for me.
“And if I had to address it, I would start from home — how I speak to my siblings and the way I treat other people.
“At FWCC we have a policy called “personal is political”.
“It means you can’t be two-faced — being someone in the work place and being a different person at home.
“We have to be the same person wherever we are, and that is what I am focusing on now in how I deal with my siblings.”