Empowering Women

My time here at Shanti has been wonderful. I have met so many amazing people who share like-minded beliefs as to why we are working with Shanti Uganda. Empowering women to give them the tools and skills they need to be successful is what Shanti is facilitating. Through the womens' income generating group, the teen girls workshops, the garden workshops or the birthing house, Shanti is empowering women and awakening the confidence within them.

Over the last 2 weeks I have been very busy co-facilitating teen girls workshops for at risk youths between the ages of 12-18 years. It has been both challenging and rewarding at the same time. The first week we partnered with Compassion International and held a teen girls workshop on their premises. The first day we started out with about 20 girls, but that quickly changed, and by the end of the week 41 girls graduated from the workshop. We were fortunate to have a midwife from Shanti come and speak with the girls about HIV/AIDS and a police officer from the Luwero police district come and instruct the girls on self-defense. The girls really enjoyed it and we felt good giving them the basic skills needed in order to defend themselves.

The second week we held an outreach workshop in Katikamu. We took the classroom outside to a grassy meadow where the girls were able to relax and enjoy being in nature while learning the material from the workshop. Yoga breaks were incorporated and the girls greatly benefited from it as it helped with their posture, concentration, and mental state, not to mention, the infectious laughter that amounted when the girls tried the yoga poses.

Each girl took away from the workshops the skills to make a reusable menstrual pad, lessons in self-defense, knowledge of HIV/AIDS, the reproductive system, establishing healthy relationships, nutrition and a heightened awareness of yoga and its benefits. As a volunteer working in Uganda, I recognize the importance of these topics not just for the teen girls here in Uganda, but also in my own country.

By facilitating the workshops these girls are receiving knowledge, skills, and support, which will help them throughout the rest of their teen years and prepare them for transitioning into becoming young women. I deeply feel that these types of workshops are needed and to be implemented all over the world to empower women to help them awaken their confidence in order to make the journey from being a teenaged girl into becoming a young woman. These young women are our future mothers. Therefore, if we invest in the youth then we can help to improve some of the problems we are facing, such as the spread of HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, and maternal and infant mortality in developing countries. I feel very fortunate to have been part of the teen girls workshop and kudos to Shanti for creating such an empowering program for young women.