Bringing change to my community

The challenges that I face is in creating change in my community are;
i) Culture: the culture of the people poses as great challenge to bringing about change in my community as most people consider it a taboo to do anything contrary to the culture. These cultural barriers come in form of religion, tradition etc. these aspects of culture form and pattern the way people behave and is a great challenge to creating change.
ii) Illiteracy: lack of educated women in my community makes it almost impossible to create change as many of the women are ignorant of their fundamental human rights and are not able to communicate in any other language outside their language.
iii) Economic dependency: The patriarchal system practiced in my community which makes the women economically dependent on the male spouses also poses as a big challenge to the women as they depend on their husband for all major decisions. Economic dependency makes it difficult for women to take initiative and participate in development activities.
Some of the solutions that I have adapted to overcoming these challenges are;
i) Educating the women on their human rights through the use of local translators in the town hall meetings and various organs like the church, market women association etc. This education process is informal as the women are gathered in an informal setting.
ii) Using the few enlightened in the community to educate the many uneducated by organizing programs that bring the women together. This I have done by using women who are considered role models in the community.
iii) Organizing skill acquisition programs to enable the women get involved in production processes. These programs enable the women to produce products like soap, tie dye, etc for sale in the market.
iv) Help the women start small scale businesses to enable them gradually become economically independent on their male spouses.
I see the possibility of using pulse wire in eventually overcoming the challenges because
i) Already I have met great and wonderful people from all parts of the world that are very inspiring and with experiences in different developmental issues. I see the possibility of drawing from the pool of these experiences to overcome the issues in my community.
ii) Through the pulse wire I can exchange resources with other members and ideas on how to solve the problems of my society.
iii) Through the pulse wire I can learn about training programs and opportunities in which I can engage women in my communities.