Fiji Council of Social Services (FCOSS)

Vani Catanasiga (pronounced Tha-tah-nah-see- nga) is the executive director of the Fiji Council of Social Services (FCOSS), based in Suva, Fiji Islands.

She is the first woman to hold the position since its establishment in 1957. Vani is an accountability advocate and works to leverage community and people's voices into policy and decisionmaking processes and spaces.

As the executive director for FCOSS, she is one of two CSO representatives on the National Disaster Management Council which oversees how climate induced disaster responses are coordinated and rolled out in the country. In this light she has worked in climate change mitigation and adaptation and coordinated Fiji CSO disaster responses with Fijian authorities since 2018 when she joined the organisation.

Much of these experiences has shaped FCOSS strategic approach to public finance management and social accountability advocacy. To date, Vani and her team continue to work on rebuilding an ecosystem of accountability in Fiji from the bottoms up, engaging communities at front and centre, providing capacity support for effective social accountability dialogue, convening spaces for co designing of collaborative social accountability tools such as the Kacivaka Scorecard and engaging national systems like the Climate Finance Sector Working Group for citizens participation and oversight.