Women Deliver 2016 :African Grassroots Women Speak

The 2016 Women Deliver Conference has just ended in Copenhagen, Denmark. Described as the decade`s largest gathering on the rights, health and wellbeing of girls and women, the conference brought together more than 5000 advocates, experts, government leaders and youth from across the globe. The conference provided an opportunity for the exposure of latest trends, innovations and research that drive solutions for girls and women around the world. The key focus was on ways of implementing the Sustainable Development Goals in a manner that will be most beneficial to women and girls.

200 plenaries, concurrent sessions and side events laid emphasis on how the biggest impact for girls and women can be obtained by concentrating on health, rights, gender equality, education and economic empowerment.

Opening this megalithic forum on Monday May 15th,the Crown Princess of Denmark, Her Royal Highness Mary Elizabeth said “We all share a common conviction –that girls and women are the key to building healthy, prosperous and sustainable societies and communities and the evidence is sound –when we invest in girls and women, society as a whole benefits.”

In the words of Katja Iverson,CEO of Women Deliver, “Women deliver, and much more than just babies, so we as a society must also deliver for women.”

I firmly agreed with the words of Princess Mary and Katja and so alongside attending the sessions, I invested a huge chunk of my time having heart to heart conversations with grassroots women from Africa.

Come with me to the African corner at Women Deliver 2016

One glance at 27 year old Aisatou Jeng and you will know she means business. Before her is a display of exquisitely colored skirts, scarves and hats made of African fabric for sale at the Conference ground. These items are produced by Aisatu and other team members of Girl`s Agenda which works to end Child Marriage and Female Genital Mutilation in The Gambia. Yields from the sales all go to support the work of their organization.

Aisatu and her team mates tell me funders hardly invest in grassroots organizations like theirs and so they have devised alternative means of raising funds for their initiatives. “If we depend on donor organizations we will not be able to do anything. They do not have interest in those of us from the grassroots” Laments Aisatu. “The quickest way to drive change is to invest in grassroots organizations because we engage with the people directly. We are directly affected by the problems so we know what solutions can work. I think we should be taken more seriously’’. She interrupts our conversation and flashes a bright smile at a customer, engages her in a warm conversation, collects two 20 dollar notes from her, hands over a yellow and blue skirt to her and puts the money in her purse while turning her head towards me with an apologetic smile. She seems to know that her grin is a marketing asset.

Having endured the pain of Female Genital Mutilation and escaped Child Marriage by a stroke of luck, Aisatu counts herself lucky to have completed University education. She is bent on duplicating her story in the lives of as many girls as possible in The Gambia where 36% of girls marry before the age of 18.According to Aisatu, when a girl drops out of school and ends up in a marriage she did not choose and a baby her body is not ready to bear, her right to a healthy sexual and reproductive life is compromised.

Not far from Aisatu sits the fervid Sarian Kamara, an international FGM campaigner from Sierra Leone based in the UK.Founder of “Keep the Drums, Drop the Knife”, an organization that works to eradicate Female Genital Mutilation. She trains health and Social Workers in the UK on how to recognize and handle victims of FGM.She also holds workshops with victims of FGM during which they exchange tactics on how to overcome the trauma. Sarian is both a victim of Breast Ironing and FGM.She tells me breast ironing is well and alive in Sierra Leone and recounts her painful experiences about the day she had her breast ironed and the dark day of her cutting (FGM).

Sarian is such an entrancing speaker, she almost turns our interview into a speaking event as passersby could not help but stop to listen to her story. “We African women are very strong because of the kind pain we have endured in the name of culture. We are fighters not by choice but by force” Sarian says with a fiery look in her eyes. She tells me she is very happy to have the chance to be present in an event of the magnitude of the Women Deliver Conference. However she will like to see more involvement of grassroots women leaders as speakers in such conferences. “The real stories and actions come from the local women at the grassroots, they should be at the table”