Grace Trifam Ministry (GTM) is the vision of a woman dedicated to empowering and developing local communities.  With her sheer commitment, sacrifice and focus this vision became a gradual reality. Over the past decade GTM has become a catalyst of empowering societies with specific focus on women and the environment.  This woman became the force and face of this vision and continues to be so to this day.  As co-founder, Mrs. Safaira Tagivuni’s story about GTM’s beginnings is not only a journey into memory lane but also a story of how a passionate visionary was able to realize her potential, creating positive socio-cultural transformation and tangible impacts in peri-urban and rural communities she had been engaged in, therefore touching the lives of those disadvantaged and the silenced around her.

GTM began in the form of a Community Women’s Group in the North Western part of Viti Levu, Fiji’s largest island.  Being the wife of the CEO of Yaqara Pastoral Company Limited, a 100% owned Fiji Government cattle ranch, Safaira was tasked with establishing the local community women’s group to bringing together the wives, partners, daughters and other female family members of all male employees of the company.

The Women Group started in October 2002. It was formally registered a year later as the Yaqara Community Women’s Group which initially focused on doing urgent projects relating to their surrounding environment as well as to the needs of women in the nearby six i-Taukei communities and three neighboring Indo-Fijian cane settlements.   

The Women’s Group primarily focused on the planting of 20,000 trees in its nursery for the development of the planned Yaqara Studio City Project.  The ultimate aim of this tree planting project was 6 Million trees but as unforeseen delays in the project occurred, the Women’s Group diversified their intentions and began selling these 20,000 trees in the nursery to the Natadola and Momi development projects at an economic gain to themselves.  In addition to these business venture, Safaira led her team of women in reaching out to local communities by providing empowerment sessions, development project funding for community schools, collective scholarship funding for rural students, and general community visitations which left a mark when the women’s group would move to their new project.  Institutional changes within the Yaqara Pastoral Company Limited meant that Safaira’s time as leader of the Yaqara Community Women’s group would end seven years later in 2008.  By then all the women were satisfied that their work and contributions to their community was much more than they had expected from the start, the women’s group was officially dissolved and every member received financial packages from its financial holdings.  For Safaira, this was only the beginning. 

For months on end, she re-consolidated her efforts, planned and re-focused with utmost determination on carrying her vision to a national level.  Her experience in the Women’s Group has opened her eyes to the ever changing fabric of society challenges and how this fabric or way of life has constantly been breached by social issues affecting our communities.  

Safaira recognized the various social ills existing at the time and knew within her heart that she could and would do something about it.  These social ills ranged from domestic family violence to environment degradation.  Safaira understood that these societal ills, if not rightly addressed in a holistic manner, will cause a tear on the way of life of the local communities.  She foresaw that the constant occurrence of these social issues and community-based problems presented a continuous breach to a way of life that was supposed to be beneficial for the community and the environment which surrounds it.

Safaira articulated her vision to her family and close-supporters. This passion then materialized in the formal registration of GRACE TRIFAM Ministry (GTM) Fiji in late November, 2011.  From a local community Women’s Group to a national faith based community organization, Safaira’s vision took on flight as a bird enjoying the clear wide skies after a storm.  In 2015, Safaira received a UNDP and Fiji Volunteer Organization co-joint commendation NATIONAL AWARD in the Sustainable Livelihood Category, for her volunteering work in the communities. Throughout the years of this transition, Safaira never paused her work where her tireless efforts became the signature soul-trait of GTM today.