Early in my childhood, my parents separated and eventually got divorced. My sister and I went to live with our grandmother in rural Jamaica. We lived in a farming community called James Hill, down a rocky road at the foot of a hill called...
Stories
When I was 15 years old, I joined Youth for Youth, a Romanian non-governmental organization working on youth sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). I became a volunteer and a peer educator, and I went into the role with very little...
As a girl growing up in Kenya, a patriarchal society with a strong cultural heritage, I knew from the onset that achieving my goals was not going to be a walk in the park. Most of the time, I often considered myself a coward for the decisions I...
I first uncovered the inequalities and challenges that girls face at a very young age. When I was a girl, I loved basketball. It made me feel free, fast, strong, and in control of my own power and body when I played. But I learned really...
During the three decades I have lived as a woman, I have experienced, felt, and witnessed many discriminatory practices, especially harmful traditional practices such as female genital mutilation and child/forced marriage against women and...
I started my work as a volunteer and I still volunteer. Late at night, in the weekends, travelling in and out of my city alone for 10 hours for both work and volunteer work, sometimes I get to travel in groups and that is much more fun and...
I believe that every woman is powerful, and just needs to explore her inner strengths. This is a story of an ordinary woman who opened her eyes in the very normal middle class family, where no women was allowed to seek/find and or explore her...
For the last eight years I’ve been working on HIV and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in Mexico but also globally, and I really feel that I have one of the most beautiful jobs ever. How can I say that this is the most...
We create and re-create our life in the stories we tell others about ourselves and in the stories we tell ourselves. Several years ago I heard Ben Zander, conductor of The Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, speak about the impact of our answer to...
Blame is a way we discharge pain. We blame others, hurling insults and digging our heels into the cushy comfort of self-righteous indignation. Or we blame ourselves. We beat ourselves up. We call ourselves names like “loser” and...