Showing posts with label Gender equality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gender equality. Show all posts

Monday, 2 March 2015

Make It Happen. Inspirational Women

International Women's Day 2015; #MakeItHappen is aimed at recognizing women who inspire us.
I started to doodle the other day and started off with this image;
The female symbol. 

The final image turned out to be an A3 page full and gave me an idea (which a story for another time). I edited the image above to something like this (below) and decided to use this as my facebook profile picture because there are too many women in my life who inspire me. 

My inspirational journey begins with none than my giver-of-life my mother.I have seen my mother work with dedication and commitment. She has always given us good advice and brought us up with good values. She always used the reward and punishment system to correct our behavior and motivated us to do the best in life. She encouraged us to try to new things and to never be afraid. She taught us "If see something you like. Buy it. It might finish if you wait for later." than she taught us "Spend your money wisely" Oh dear mother!! You shopaholic you!! But we have used that phrase in life. Don't wait for someone else to do things for you. If you want something go and get it. Tomorrow it might be gone. Love you heaps!!  

Number 2 on my list is my one and only sister. She is simply beauty with brains and amazing skills is what she has. She is a graphic designer by profession and one of the best ones I know of too. Over the years I have seen her grow from one 'tomboy' to this young woman who now matches her clothes with ear rings bags and shoes. :-) She has super awesome skills. Driving like a maniac (sometimes) and drawing the most gorgeous of things, capturing the soul of what ever she photographs and she owns the kitchen too, mixing spices of all sorts. She loves her food, games and iGadgets. She inspires me to be creative and stand out in the crowd. She inspires many others too!! #SisterSister :-)

What would we be without aunts! Aunts who spoil us with goodies, who threaten us to do our home works and than take us out for ice creams :-) Aunts! I love my aunt more so because she is more like a mother and a best friend to us and less like an aunt. Always supporting us in our life decisions and guiding us through difficulties. Encouraging us to take that difficult step and lending an ear when we need to vent. My aunt has always been my support network and always looked out for us. She has contributed immensely to my upbringing and contributed towards the drive of becoming an independent young woman!! Watching her go to University with big books and late night studies I was determined to become a graduate too. She motivated us to explore our options on job/career and so we did. No one could ever tell us we couldnt do it because she was the louder voice of reason saying "You can do it and you will."  thanks to this powerful woman we have done it :-) #AuntsAreForSpoilingUs :-) 
There are so many other women who have been my inspiration and motivation. Most of them are close to home. I know these women on a personal level and am able to contact them when I need the support. I think it is equally important that we recognize the women in our (personal) lives who have motivation to us just as much as we recognize women who have made history. 

Another young women I would like to acknowledge here is a dear friend I made in Bali during the UNAOC 6th Global Forum where the youth put together 8 Recommendations 
Meet Ms. Kavindya Thennakoon (first from left in Blue). Young woman from Sri Lanka who is doing so much for her community. She is also one of the recipients of the Queens Young Leaders Award (2015) and we will be crossing paths again in London. Kavi; set up the organization Without Boarders and for someone so young she is representing her youth voices of her country at International Platforms and doing it so well. She is a great friend and has a very strong personality. AND she loves TEA too <3

A very happy International Woman's Day to one and all!!!
And a happy wedding anniversary to my parents who tied the knot on such an important day!! :-) :-) Little did they know what it meant, it meant giving birth to two very strong, opinionated, independent and creative daughters :-) 
My beautiful family :-)


Until Next blog;
:-) :-) 









Thursday, 12 February 2015

Distributing My Guide To Voting

My Guide to Voting distribution

13th August 2014.

Liesl and I went to distribute more copies of the "My guide to voting" or as we like to call it MG2V!!
It was raining on and off but this did not deter us! We took around 80 copies with us and started from USP. Students who could not make it to our booth on USP Open day are still able to collect their copies from us.
Next stop was a 45 mins drive away into the settlement. We got a little lost but found the right house at last.
The members of the household are a mother, daughter and son. She is a single mother living in a household given to her by some family friends. Her only source of income is being an underpaid house maid. She is just trying to put her kids through school. I asked why the kids weren't in school today to which she replied they had no bus fare and she mentioned she had no food in the home.

Wait a minute. What about this bus fare scheme we hear about? So the school has refused to give her children the bus vouchers and told their mother to take the matter up with Ministry of Education. For a woman who has no food at home to feed her children I don't see how she is going to travel the City to get justice on this matter.

Our next stop was a little more fun! The household members received the books with open arms and make us a rather large cup of tea, gave us some cookies and fruits. This is was so fulfilling to our rumbling stomachs and in the rain the tea (my favorite) was just right.  One of the young girls in the house hold is an 18 year school student who has finished exams for the term and is looking forward to distributing copies of the book to her neighbors and friends and is super excited to vote!!

Our next stop was at another home that offered tea! Thank you auntie but my tummy is now full.! She was super interested because she said the book looked fun! The illustrations were very eye catchy for her and she looks forward to sharing the copies with her neighbors and families.

And this folks is why I love community work!! You network. You meet so many different types of people. You hear their stories. You feel sad. You get happy. You get caught in the rain and you burn in the sun! You carry on.

At this point I would like to thank our super awesome taxi driver MR. Sashi Prasad. Maybe we will do a vlog interview with him soon :-)

MG2V Distribution - Video