This story is written by our intern, Magda, who is with our team for a whole year. She works closely with our women’s group and is highly motivated and enthusiastic at work. It is great to have her as part of our team. Magda facilitated a session on the International Women’s Day and interviewed four strong women during the Women’s History Month in March which she summarised in this story! Enjoy reading it.
As the 8th marked international women’s day and the month of March international women’s month, at SLRA, we decided to honor women from our community through a women’s group session and interviews.
The group session surrounded topics such as ‘women we admire and who am I’. Women from our community used this opportunity to be creative and share lived experiences with each other, it was a success!
We have also interviewed four women who we think have a big impact on our female community. One of them is a youth club member, who loves to share her support with the community. The other promotes mental health by creating a welcoming and safe space for women from all around the world. They all are a very engaged volunteer who assist on different matters. Their names are, Wintana, Florence and Sasha.
Wintana, the first women that was interviewed is a 16-year-old student, and an active participant of the youth club as well as a volunteer! Wintana would love to do even more volunteering, as she says “Whenever I do volunteer work, I am super proud and happy. Being of help to members of the community feels great.” When asked what she would like to say to women in her community her answer was “(…) They are nothing less than men. Whatever problem they faced before should never hold them back from achieving their best. Also, they are very strong and capable of achieving great success.” For her a woman is a pillar of society.
Then we reached out to Florence, another wonderful SLRA volunteer. She checks on how people are feeling and whether they need any kind of support. If they do, she can signpost them. She says, “Checking on people is the most important basic help that a lot of people need in the community. The ones I can (…) I do everything to help them, if the issue is beyond me, I signpost them to the right place they can get help.” She would like to do more in the future, get involved in more activities with people from the community. When I asked her to describe a woman, she said that a woman is someone with a caring heart, fearless, bold, strong, and kind-hearted person. Her message to the women is “Thank you for your boldness, hard work, supporting each other and thank you for your kindness.”
Finally, I spoke to Sasha – an amazing woman and a volunteer here at SLRA. She has conversations with women about their abilities and brings attention to the women’s physical and mental health. She’s very involved and ready to do engage in more work. She says, “I want all women to be happy and free”. According to Sasha a woman is “the creator of the world, mothers give birth to future men and women, and educate them.”
Her message to other women is “you are very capable and strong, and you just need to believe in yourself and be recklessly happy and take care of yourself.”
The opportunity to give women platform to speak was an amazing experience for all of us. We were able to share observations and opinions in a friendly and safe space. I hope it wasn’t only a onetime thing, but the start of more open conversations with each other. We must remember that although March is the international women’s month, womanhood should be celebrated all year long.