23 communities involved in Community Engagement Projects have received $7,350 from the Fijian Elections Office in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme.
FEO says 23 Community Election Advocates have collectively received their allowances for conducting election awareness sessions in their respective groups.
They say Community Elections Advocates are required to conduct a 15-minute awareness session on elections with their community members and depending on the number of participants who attend the session, the community receives a grant which will go towards any development activity that benefits their community.
Supervisor of Elections, Mohammed Saneem says the programme is progressing well and the projects have done well in conducting voting related talanoa within the communities and the payment is for the communities to use for their projects.
Saneem says making elections a topic of discussion at grassroots level and arming people with direct crude information was certainly the way to go for the FEO.
The FEO says they with UNDP aim to certify 240 Community Elections Advocates around the country and reach over 7,000 Fijians through them.
So far, 172 community representatives have been trained and certified with 10 Training of Trainers sessions.
