I don’t need to be everything to everyone but would love to be something to someone

Somalia being an African country whereby most of its society believed girls should remain home, ladies should keep their voices low and follow whatever been told without questioning, and so on. I started encouraging girls ever since I finished high school to study harder and compete with their fellow classmates (boys) and tell them education is the only way to succeed and gives you reputation within the community that you can fight for your rights.

Even though we are focusing women’s rights within the community some women believe that this is a western vision/culture and the best way to overcome those challenges is by carrying awareness raising through media and holding training workshops, me and some of my friends have already started doing that and hope it will be fruitful. In this society if you insist that women should have a voice and fight for their rights, they criticize you by saying you adapted the western culture, its always challenging how to convince that its their rights to get education, health care, etc and they should fight for it and not only western culture.

One of my biggest challenges is my age, when everyone sees me they don’t take me seriously thinking that am too young for whatever I say, that I can’t lead because of my age and gender, that I can’t bring changes in my community, I remember the first time I applied the job I didn’t get it for some reasons and the first excuse was I was too young to be a lead researcher, and on top of that everybody thinks I am a girl who shouldn’t be giving orders or guidelines.

One of the things I can’t forget is that I have been invited for the opening ceremony and giving awards to the top students for the academic year 2010-2011 of my former high school last month, the students who received awards were around 50 and do you know how many ladies were awarded? Only two out of that huge number, I felt sad and discouraged because of what happened, after so many years the least I expected was to see at least 15-20 girls among those who got awards.
Sometimes I feel discouraged when I see how things are not progressing, I feel like giving up but then I remember what my friend once told me “you will never be defeated unless you admit it” and that is what keeps me going, am sure I will bring the change my community needs, I might not be able to change the whole society but am sure I might change someone and that one might change another and continues that way.

Here in PulseWire there are great women whom we have become best friends, they always encourage me, I share my weaknesses and they give me advice, everytime I read from them I feel more encouraged. I believe that I will be the change and win this race no matter what.