Hardships and experiences has strengthened my leadership skills - Buadromo

Co-lead of the Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights Asia and the Pacific Virisila Buadromo has revealed how the challenges she faced in her life has strengthened her leadership skills.

While speaking at the Leadership Fiji Program Launch and Fellows Induction in Suva, Buadromo says her experience with Leadership Fiji really helped her to work through her trust issues.

Buadromo says the programme in 2014 was the first time she allowed herself to be seen when she acknowledged the traumas she experienced at the hands of the military in 2006.

Buadromo says the experience challenged her to confront her trauma and the subsequent effect it had on her relationships with others.

Buadromo adds her role at the Urgent Action Fund for Asia and Pacific forces her to be agile and to adapt to the political contexts that women and non binary human rights activists work in.

She says she accepts that lawmakers will keep changing laws that prohibit the transfer of foreign funds to activists and tag them as threats to their national security.

Buadromo says their acceptance of the shifting goal posts drives them to be innovative in their support of the frontline defenders they work with.