International Women's Day: Davina Plummer on removing obstacles and the Army that brings life

Davina Plummer is a passionate advocate for others through her role as Community Ministries' coordinator for Tauranga Salvation Army. During COVID, Davina saw many crises worsen - and many ways that The Salvation Army could bring life to alleviate isolation, poverty and pain. Listen to Davina's experience as she shares her hope for change.

Kia ora, I'm Davina from the Tauranga Salvation Army and I'm the manager of our Community Ministries here. 

So it's our privilege to encourage people by alleviating distress. We try to remove the barriers that cause hardship for people. There's - food costs are ever-increasing, rent costs are ever-increasing, participation in sport and support for education has become a privilege for the elite in many cases. So we do our best to remove the barriers and to be able to support people to live life to the full. 

That’s our mission, that we might really be ‘the Army that brings life’. 

COVID had a huge impact last year on employment in the community. It made the housing crisis even more imminent. We were part of supporting people to get into homes and we continue to do that. COVID changed the way that we worked. We were reaching into the community as a reactive response to many who were unable to go to the supermarkets, especially the elderly. We became a bit of a Foodbank on wheels.

It changed the way that we could work face-to-face with our clients. Many of those who consider us their whanau, their family, and see us for regular connection became isolated and we had to find other ways to do that. 

We had to do it over the phone.
We had to access computers for families that didn’t have them.
We had to find ways to provide families with activities to do - to find things to do - but also to be able to have positive connections when there was even more stress on already strained relationships.

It’s so encouraging to see men, women, children - in a better place because we've been able to be a part of the solution or to empower them to have the confidence to achieve their goals.

We're celebrating International Women's Day by sharing women's testimonies of leadership during COVID in New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa Territory. We will be releasing new videos daily, and joining a worldwide video montage on The Salvation Army International Social Justice Commission's Facebook Page on March 8th. We invite you to share and view these stories with your community, to amplify their voices!

• CHECK OUT the other Salvationist Stories here (updated daily)
• VIEW the videos on Youtube (captions available)
• VIEW and SHARE from our Facebook Page
• DOWNLOAD the video files from OneDrive