I am concerned about women empowerment seeing that the anachronistic patrilineal mindset is still entrenched in our society. This is vivid through disinheritance of women from their deceased parents property and subjugation of women in households leading to domestic violence and inferiority complex of women as the usual home makers. On the latter edict specifically, it is influencing a lot of kids in rural areas to see marriage as an end goal rather than a means to an end . They can have alternative ends besides marriage, the most pertinent one being achieving to be the best version of themselves by exploiting their potentials to the maximum. Against this backdrop, My project is under SDG 5 gender equality. The problem i address is that, more often than not, in my neighbourhood, girls presume that after their secondary education, the next thing is marriage. Thus, my project comes to shift that perspective to remind them that marriage is not an end but a means to an end. Therefore you need to have your own master-plan and advance yourself as an individual so that your not looking for someone to complete you . so on the goals of the project are self awareness and personal growth and under personal growth it is subdivided on setting goals in all aspects of your life, how to tackle comparison, confidence and resilience, mental health exercise move your body, friendships.
Just to give a brief overview of some areas we covered with them, under self awareness I informed them to go to https personality test .com to identify or at least have a clue of who they are . In addition, under confidence I gave them my example where as a law student who is passionate about moot court competitions, what informs my confidence is through research. So using that real life analogy I informed them that confidence is informed by what you know . Therefore, I advised them to listen to news both local and international because I remember I began listening to BBC as young as class 4 and in hindsight I am where I am because of that exposure . I also shared a scenario by one of the female guests you had brought in one of the webinars. She had applied for 144 summer internships only to be received in the 145th one and I mentioned this to emphasize that resilience is key on this journey of self growth. In a nutshell, that’s what my project entails. The impact I seek to achieve, is independent minded individuals and women as per my project who not only are aware that they deserve a chance at the table like their male counterparts but also have something to bring at the table primarily being able to articulate their ideas with precision, courage and coherence, because essentially this is what i have been getting from the people who have talking to us throughout this fellowship.