Transcript
NIKI RATTLE: Very few of the national people are actually involved and so therefore what would be important when we go back is to co-ordinate everybody involved, coordinate the ministries, co-ordinate the civil society, co-ordinate the parliamentarians, bring everyone together and hold a workshop and go through what we've been going through today. And so deliver the same information so everybody starts off at a level where as we do what we need to do within our individual areas we can then be achieving what this has set out to do.
DM-C: That's not an easy task though you're battling against people first of all with different opinions, different ideologies and also geographical difficulties because you are spread out across different islands to get people in, so is that going to be achievable or will that take some wrangling?
NR: So what we need to do then is look at what's existing it's looking at bringing the people from the outer islands for meetings or forums that we already have in place and so while they're there capitalize on that time. Then of course as we talk to the ministries to the other partners, stakeholders, then it's being able to agree with everybody that it's going to be a good time of the year because as we're getting closer to the end of the year, everybody will be preparing for Christmas for the holidays, so we would like to do this, we have a big meeting happening in the Cook Islands in November, a commonwealth parliamentary conference and so we're hoping that we can either add a couple days onto that or do it before and try and get this done.
DM-C: So let's imagine that everything has gone perfectly and everyone has managed to come together at the same time to talk about this, what would be at the top of the agenda?
NR: Yes and I think it'll be very important and to focus on what the themes of what the ICPD (International Conference on Population and Development) and SDGs and looking at the welfare of women and girls, sexual reproduction rights and looking at the education, the information being able to reach everybody because as you said earlier we have outer islands. So for a parliamentarian responsibility each member who comes from that island, they can take an active part in taking some of this information back with organisations as in the women's organisations, the ministry of health, because every island has a health system on each of their island, there's a welfare office so it's trying to get everybody together to co-ordinate themselves, not just on the main island but in each of the outer islands and being able to engage with the community. Not just women, young boys as well their sexual reproductive health is just as important.
DM-C: Have you ever thought about a Skype link to the outer islands to talk to people?
NR: Yeah, the outer islands people are very active on Facebook and a lot of people talk to each other by Skype, so young people are very good at developing that sort of thing so perhaps that could be something they could do.
