Lauren Conrow is helping a village in Fiji develop and build a health-conscious restaurant and vegetable farm aimed at empowering the community and its women.
When most people think of Fiji, they picture white sand beaches and crystal clear waters. For Lauren Conrow, Fiji is much more.
As a Peace Corps volunteer, Conrow has been working in Matailobau, a village of about 100 people, where, for two years, she has helped the community, particularly women, build economic opportunity and mobility.
However, Conrow, who graduated from Northeastern University in 2023 with a degree in business administration, says her role in the Peace Corps is more about creating a two-way street of empowerment and knowledge sharing.
“Something I love about the Peace Corps is they really start you off slow intentionally so you take the time to learn the culture, learn the community, learn how to have your development projects be community driven,” Conrow says. “We’re not just coming in with, ‘This is what I think the village needs.’ We’re really empowering them to decide for themselves and teach them the tools to decide for themselves.”
Conrow is honest about the fact that her onboarding to the Peace Corps was overwhelming. It started with a 10-week pre-service training where she was placed with a host family and underwent intensive language and cultural training. She learned the Peace Corps’ primary method, participatory analysis community action, or PACA, that centers the community in guiding Peace Corps projects.
After that initial training came a three-month integration period in which Conrow adjusted to the site she would be volunteering in for the next two years. This time is all about “making relationships, hearing people’s stories, getting to know the dialect because every village has a different dialect.”
Even for a seasoned traveler like Conrow, learning the ins and outs of Fiji’s cultural and social norms required a lot of mental energy. Even sitting at a table requires an understanding of a community’s or household’s social hierarchy, she explains. Depending on a person’s social status and respect in the village, they sit at a different location.
Conrow managed to break the ice and forge relationships with the people of Matailobau, but it took time, patience and a willingness to listen, she says. It helped that she was there specifically to listen and assist the village.
“When they feel like they’re leading themselves, and in many ways they are leading themselves, that’s when it will be sustainable and you’ll get buy-in and you’ll get consistent participation,” Conrow says.
After conducting workshops with men, women and children in the village where they discussed potential problems to tackle with a Peace Corps project, they settled on addressing unhealthy eating. As Fiji became Westernized, indigenous people in villages like Matailobau, started farming less and eating fast, cheap meals, Conrow says.
The project that the community ultimately settled on was a healthy eating restaurant and store in the village that will be staffed by local women, along with a vegetable farm that women can use to source fresh produce that will be used in plant-based meals sold at the restaurant. The restaurant is just the first piece in a larger development plan that involves building the same site into a complex of eight stores, a gas station and, potentially, a supermarket.
Creating economic opportunities for the village is invaluable, especially for women who often lack financial independence and resources beyond those that men in the village have, Conrow says. The profit generated by the restaurant and store will partially go to the women’s group as a whole but also to each individual worker as well.
“There’s been a lot of research within the development landscape that when females have financial independence and have a separate source of income, domestic violence rates decrease dramatically [and] reported equity increases drastically,” Conrow says.
“In our first workshop that we had, I would ask the women to stand up and share their group’s work,” Conrow adds. “A few of the women cried because they traditionally are never given a role to speak, so they aren’t used to public speaking. … Now when we do workshops, everyone’s fighting to stand up and share out.”
The project involves active collaboration between the 30 or so women who are developing the restaurant and the village cooperative, led almost exclusively by men, has resulted in some tension. However, having a common goal has also broken down barriers between the two groups.
“We’re all working together to develop this land, which is really special,” Conrow says.
Conrow’s Peace Corps service ends in the fall, but she has already seen the project come to life as a physical site and an energizing force within the hearts and minds of Matailobau. But her work in the village is not a one-way street.
“You hear about the social isolation crisis in America and people are on their phones and lacking this tactile, physical connection,” Conrow says. “I really have seen how a way of more communal living can increase a lot of happiness, increase a lot of feeling of connection. I’m very interested in learning how you can apply some of these principles to urban development in the West.”