It takes a village: Ending violence through community and faith-based counselling in Samoa
Lemau Palaamo represents the Congregational Church of Samoa Mission Office, and is the President, Co-founder and Counsellor for SoulTalk Samoa Trust, a pastoral counselling agency. She is an advocate for ending violence against women girls and children, an expert in child protection and child safeguarding, and a member of Spotlight Initiative's Civil Society Global Reference Group. Below, she shares how she's working to end violence against women and girls in her community.
Describe some of the counselling work that you do in Samoa.
We’ve done a lot of one-on-one sessions in partnership with the Ministry of Justice. We do rehabilitation programmes through the alcohol and drugs court, where there’s an option for the judge to have participants take part in our 12 week programme before the sentencing. We do rehabilitation for the juvenile justice prison and the main prison in Samoa.
Counselling is not westernized in Samoa. What we’ve noticed is that it’s not an individual that we have to work with, we have to work with the environment and the village as well.
How does drug and alcohol counselling intersect with gender-based violence?
Drugs and alcohol can cause anger when they are under the influence [and make violence more likely to occur]. There’s not really a clinical response in Samoa to help people detox from addiction, so the closest thing we can do is to talk to them and try to steer them away from what they’ve been used to, which is very hard.
We are community-based. We teach the leaders of the villages, the family and extended family how they approach that particular person. The ministers and ladies of the church are a pinnacle in the life of a Samoan. We don’t look at just one person having this problem. We look at their entire family environment. More often than not, their family needs counselling just as much.
There’s a need for confidentiality when you’re dealing with these issues. How do you balance that with a community-based approach?
If we are doing advocacy or prevention work, we would take an overall approach to avoid pinpointing a particular person. We say, “We have a programme on ending violence against women and girls” and invite the community. Usually, we will use a church hall and ask the ministers gather those you think need to hear this information.
In other cases, multiple family members will reach out to us but they'll have no idea that the other has done the same. Women are very low-key and often don’t want to be seen seeking help if they’re in a domestic violence situation. So she will text me and we meet up at a café, as if we’re having coffee with a friend. It looks like we’re just hanging out. They wouldn't come to an office space.
Often, women do not believe in separating the father from the children. She still has love for him, but she wants him to get help. That’s when my husband works with the man [to address his violence or addiction issues].
What happens at the end of the counselling programme?
We constantly do follow ups after our sessions, and then we do a monthly follow up. More often than not, the people we work with will contact us or send us messages and photos because they’re so thankful that they’re back on a road where they’re achieving their goals.
Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
