Vanuatu’s grassroots women’s movement has landed in Australia and it began with a long, much-awaited embrace.
When Mitingar Founder Mary Jack stepped into Sydney Airport, she was met by Wendy Harper, Founder of Agency of Women. They embraced like long-lost childhood friends who have been separated by oceans and decades of time.
Their connection was intentional, born in the midst of COVID, when Mary reached out to Wendy through Facebook about building Mitingar. What followed was a fast friendship and deep connection formed entirely through screens. Years of voice notes. Late-night strategy calls. Patchy connections across time zones. Conversations squeezed between cyclones, community meetings, and the rhythm of two very different daily lives.
Across the distance and time, Mitingar’s mission did not wane; it deepened. So did the resolve of two women who believed something bigger was possible, steadily building the bridge that would one day bring Mary to Australia.
While their hug was personal. The mission is collective.
Mary didn’t arrive on Sydney steps loaded with luggage, she arrived carrying voices of women who rarely sit at ministerial tables.
“I am very excited to be here”, she says. “It has been a long and difficult journey for the women of Vanuatu, and never before has an independent representative of grassroots women travelled to Australia for ministerial and government meetings. I am here on their behalf to share their stories and to help bring together a family of Australian supporters to walk with the women, on their journey of empowerment and self-determination, in the face of escalating climate impacts.”
Now the work moves from screens to meeting rooms. From voice notes to policy tables. From intention to influence.
Mary stands not just for herself, but for the women living on the front lines across Vanuatu’s 65 remote inhabited islands. Women rebuilding homes, food supplies and access to water between disasters. Women caring for the young, the old, the disabled. Women holding knowledge, community, and futures together.
The message she carries is steadfast and clear; the women can sustain and grow what they they know is needed, if power and resources flow directly to them.
For more than four decades, Mary has advanced women’s social leadership in Vanuatu. From senior roles at the Pacific Institute of Public Policy, working at the intersection of government, civil society and politics to contesting national elections, her focus has remained constant: representation, coordination and voice.
Her life’s work, together with the women she represents, is Mitingar. A national movement building the infrastructure to connect and empower women across every island in Vanuatu.
It exists because the traditional top-down model is no longer enough and International aid organisations are slowly recognising this too. Resources that arrive after disaster strikes do not build long-term resilience. Local infrastructure does. Trusted networks do. Women already embedded in place, do.
Mitingar is laying that foundation from the ground up, beginning on Mary’s home island of Tanna. The goal is transformative: to create a pathway where international support flows equitably through local leadership structures rather than bypassing them.
As Wendy Harper explains, “It’s so important that the women get to architect and build their own gender equity gradient. With 60% of ni-Van women reporting intimate partner violence, only the women themselves know how to navigate this path safely…and in a culturally sustainable way. The women are not asking for aid. Reliance on aid does not help them build the social leadership capacities their communities need. What Mary and the women want is partnership. They want to know they are not forgotten. They want us to walk with them in solidarity and share the journey.”
Throughout March, meetings across Sydney during Climate Action Week will directly shape regional climate policy conversations and Pacific resilience frameworks.
But beyond the formal engagements, this visit represents something more human and more enduring – Women building systems strong enough to hold their communities steady – not just during crises, but between them, as well.
Mitingar is not asking for a seat at someone else’s table. It is tabling its own structure for contributing to the wellbeing of their nation and is inviting the people of Australia to stand with them.
