Posts Tagged ‘women’

09
Mar
2016

Amani Yahya: Yemen’s first female rapper

categories: Social Transformation, Speaking Truthfully AWARD

I have created the Speaking Truthfully Award to recognize and honor people who exemplify and embody Speaking Truthfully principles and practices.

Award

Amani Yahya is Yemen’s first female rapper and she is raising awareness of the struggles of women in war. The 22-year-old singer, who has had to flee her troubled homeland, is determined to use her music to highlight women’s rights, child marriage and sexual harassment in the Arab world.

Amani Yahya

“Women in Yemen don’t show their talents because our society is so dominated by men, and they don’t support women … in music,” she says. “But my dad loves music and my parents always taught me to speak my mind.”

Read a wonderful article about Amani in The Guardian by Homa Khaleeli: “Amani Yahya, Yemen’s first female rapper: I will find a way, I will shine”

22
Feb
2016

Not-for-Profit of the Month: SAFE WORLD FOR WOMEN

categories: Social Transformation
Once a month, I will profile a not-for-profit organization, whose purpose, work, and values I wholeheartedly support. February 2016:  Safe World for Women.

Safe-world-for-Women

Our online resource centre helps you to find organisations working with issues affecting women and children, throughout the world.

Joy-Orphanage

As the founder of Safe World for Women, I am committed to bringing together women and men who share our vision for a safer and more humane world.

We need to start by protecting the most vulnerable. Women and children still make up most of the world’s poor, most victims of war, most refugees and so it goes on. I truly believe that a Safe World for Women is a safe world for all.

In the summer of 2009, I visited women’s groups in the Middle East and rural Uganda, with my husband Andrew. I returned home feeling blessed that we live in a peaceful, lush part of the world and also inspired by the strength of human spirit when faced with unimaginable challenges.

My dim distant past varies from being head keeper at a wild-life park, book cover artist, columnist for a local journal, running a gardening business, studying biology, natural nutrition, homeopathy and Tibetan psycotherapy, coordinating workshops and retreats … to bringing up two children in the wilds of Ireland and Cornwall along ‘natural nurturing’ principles.

Chris Crowstaff, founder and truste

07
Sep
2014

How to Treat Women: a non-definitive guide

categories: Authentic Living, Lifestyles, Social Transformation, Society & Culture

“Well, I got a woman way over town that’s good to me, oh yeah. Say I got a woman way over town, good to me, oh yeah.” ~ Ray Charles

Wasn’t brother Ray a lucky dog to have met a woman that was good to him? Of course he’d sing about it! But she’s not going be good to him for long if he’s not good to her. Same for you and me. We’ve got to be good to our women, treat them right.

But do we know how?

Dorze Woman

I’m going to get in the ring with a rampaging bull risking everything and tell you what I think about how to treat our woman. In over my head? As my young niece often used to say, “Duh, Uncle Robbie” accompanied by a look of pure astonishment at how stupid one man could be.

Anyone who knows me will testify under oath that I’m not an expert in how to treat women — then again, I don’t believe any such expert exists (outside of mental institutions). (more…)

22
Aug
2014

Pope Francis: the issue is not women.

categories: Social Transformation, Spirituality & Religion

Somehow, somewhere I became hypersensitive to the ways in which girls and women throughout the world are disrespected, degraded, abused, violated, imprisoned, sold, raped, tortured, and killed. I have traveled through or lived in more than 20 countries. I have seen this everywhere, from put-downs at dinner parties to teenage sex workers to eight-year-old laborers.

When I lived in Australia from 2005 – 2011, I taught authentic public speaking. The majority of my students were women, most of whom had experienced some form and degree of emotional, psychological, or physical abuse. I would sometimes offer them, in the safety of our workshop, a chance to speak with strength and power to their past oppressor. I had to stop offering that exercise because it became too explosive, sometimes violent.

800px-Pope_Francis_with_Cristina_Fernandez_de_Kirchner_9

In Melbourne, a girlfriend of mine told me she had been sexually abused every day from the time she was three until she was strong enough to stop it—at 16 years of age. We were sharing a bath when she told me. I couldn’t hear all of it at first. I couldn’t get my mind around it. I cried. She was a beauty who had not only survived, but thrived. Her heart and her forgiving soul were beyond me. (more…)