K. Nicole Kindred – Sustainability Consultant

On Tuesday I had the opportunity to attend World Pulse LIVE at the Paley Center for Media in New York City.

World Pulse is an organization that strives to bring a voice to women around the globe using new technology and media. One example of this was in the My Camera and Me against a Regime video – a video that was uploaded from a mobile phone by a women who was arrested during a Sudanese protest. World Pulse allows for an online area where women can come together to find and share their success stories.

For World Pulse LIVE, Martha Llano from Colombia, Beatrice Achieng from Uganda, and Sarvina Kang from Cambodia were selected to come to the US to discuss how they are using new media and technology to facilitate them as grassroots leaders.

The women told powerful stories of how they found their voices. In Martha’s talk she spoke about the dangers of living in the Columbia cloud forest and how she had learned to overcome the dangers. When people told her she should carry a gun, she refused, saying “I will not take a gun to speak for me, because I have my own voice and words”. She emphasized the importance of thinking globally and acting locally.

Sarvina told her story of being the only literate individual in a family of 35. She was the only girl in her family and her village to go to college and now has her Master’s in NGO leadership. She emphasized the importance of education for women in creating change and preventing social problems like sex trafficking.

Beatrice told her story of growing up in Uganda and her emphasis on HIV prevention and education. She emphasized how if you give hope to one girl, a grassroots leader will emerge. She told the story of how when her last brother died of AIDS, her mother lost all hope because only men can own land in Uganda; however, after she told her story on the World Pulse platform, the World Pulse members emphasized that they were behind her and she stood up to her village for the land and was able to keep it.

When asked what the women thought would be most beneficial to their communities in spreading their voice, all three women emphasized that their was a lack of technology in their communities, and solar panels would be an easy remedy.

World Pulse LIVE is also available launching an online tour for individuals who are not able to attend the event in person.

I attended the Building the Movement: Change Makers Conference, part of We Can BC, this past Saturday at the SFU Harbor Center in Vancouver.

The ‘We Can’ Campaign is an international campaign aimed to deal with the violence that women endure daily, both within their homes and in the larger community. In order to mobilize large sectors of the community, it has created the Change Maker campaign. Individuals sign on as Change Makers – men, women, boys and girls who pledge not to tolerate or commit violence against women, to re-examine their own beliefs and values, and to encourage at least five other people to do the same. The conference featured a panel of speakers and a workshop on becoming a change maker.

Indira Prahst was one of the speakers and a faculty member in the Department of Sociology at Langara College. One of the questions she asked was why is there a negative attitude towards women? She speculated on the devaluing of roles, women seen as an economic burden and socially constructed issues that can be changed. She also emphasized the need to deconstruct attitudes of culture and reconstruct new images of woman and the need to think of ways men can feel comfortable and not blamed.

Maggie Ip is involved with the S.U.C.C.E.S.S Foundation and spoke from a social services point of view. She noted that there is no ethnic boundary for domestic violence. There is a need to work with the victims as a social service organization, but noted that victims kept coming back, so we need to find the root of the problem and proposed support groups for men. Society must change their attitudes on how to protect the public and discussed three levels of change:
1 – Public education from early childhood to adult level;
2 – A zero tolerance policy and a change in the institution/system to recognize this; and
3 – Intervention.

Bill Saunders is President of the Vancouver & District Labour Council and raised the question of why nine out of ten domestic cases is men against women? He discussed how the root lies in the question of gender relationship and gender roles in society. Noting that women have been successful in evolving the definition of their role, he discussed that men now have to work to develop and evolve their role. One of the points he made, which I quite like was “Acquiescence does not mean understanding”, when we understand then we cam facilitate in change. He stressed that we need to facilitate as a society the ability to open the discussion on gender relations and work with key groups of men to facilitate these changes.

Sgt. Richard Rabinovitch was a speaker from the Vancouver Police Department and addressed the question as to how the police can respond and improve responses to domestic violence in the community. An important step was to make the community realize that domestic violence is not a private issue and noted that domestic violence can not be pinpointed to one group, it spans all socio-economic boundaries.

A workshop on how to become a Change Maker followed the panel discussions. Information on how to become a Change Maker, and materials that can be of use can be found on the We Can website.