SI was privileged to take part in the Commonwealth’s ‘Women as Agents of Change’ competition, launched to celebrate the theme of Commonwealth Day 2011. Although we were restricted to only 3 nominations we received many fantastic submissions. This week, we will be running a special blog series to celebrate all the nominations – a fitting close to a month where women have been celebrated across the Commonwealth!

Carol Kidu  – Papua New Guinea / Australia

Dame Carol Kidu is a teacher by training and belongs to the Soroptimist International club in

Port Moresby,
Papua New Guinea. Carol was first elected to the Parliament in

Papua New Guinea in 1997. She was re-elected in 2002 and 2007 and is presently the only women in the 109 member Parliament.

She has been the minister for Community Development since 2002 and has been described as a “visionary reformer” due to her commitment to transform the legislative and policy frameworks for social development in
PNG societies as they interface with Western society. She has facilitated the preparation of major legislative reforms to the criminal code on rape and sexual assault.

In 2007, the magazine Islands Business named her "Person of the Year", in recognition of her efforts towards poverty alleviation, against domestic violence and child abuse, against HIV and AIDS and in favour of women’s empowerment. In February 2009, she was made a knight of the Légion d’honneur by

France, for "her dedication to helping women, young girls, children, the physically and mentally impaired and her commitment to fighting discrimination". She was the first citizen of

Papua New Guinea ever to receive this award. She accepted the award on behalf of the people of

Papua New Guinea.

In 2010, Dame Carol was the chairwoman of the

Papua New Guinea delegation to the 46^th review committee session on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) at the UN in

New York. You can read a report from our SI UN Rep in New York on this meeting here.

Dame Carol Kidu’s work in her parliamentary life shows she is truly a leader and role model for women in the Pacific Region. Her unerring commitment to the empowerment of women and continued battle to fight violence against women and children in
PNG is exceptionally inspirational.

We will share our remaining Soroptimist Commonwealth Agents of Change stories tomorrow. We hope you will continue to follow our celebratory blog posts!