"ACTUALIZE" AND "VOCALIZE" THE WORDS EVERY WOMAN SHOULD HEAR!

Thursday March 28th 2013, was no different day for me. As usual I started my day by reading the emails in my five email addresses. Yes, five! They all serve a different purpose. In my “creative email address” they was an email from AMWIK (Association of Media Women in Kenya). As a member I receive regular emails from AMWIK and take time to go through each one of them. One email read:
Dear Members,
Please find attached the below on how to apply for an online training programme in citizen journalism and digital empowerment that gives a new generation of emerging leaders the skills and knowledge they need to actualize and vocalize their visions for themselves, their communities and the world.
The terms “actualize” and “vocalize” gave me the punch needed to get me up with the ‘many visions I have in life’. I might sound undecided on what I want to do but trust me I can visualize it and I have part of it in writing.
So I decided to apply for VOF because all the programs I have attended courtesy of AMWIK make me a better a person...
VOF came at a point when I am doing an extreme make over in my life. When I want to challenge and engage my thinking. When I want to listen and be heard. When I want to dream and act and not just be in the comfort zone of my dreams. When I want to excel and shine like the bright morning star.
With VOF, I am glad that someone is listening when I am talking. There is nothing that pulls me down like been ignored especially when I think I have something important to say, it leaves me devastated.
I am encouraged by the stories of fellow participants making me exhume all my buried dreams. They include writing fiction, learning to cycle a motor bike, farming, using the skills of my communications degree to talk…talk in poetry and spoken word, talk in music and dance and talk in the written word.
What do I want to talk about? I want to talk about the teenage girls in my village who the “end of school” comes as early as after primary school level because marriage seems promising than education.
I want to talk about that slum school I volunteered to teach and one of my students was raped by her father and her mother threatened to death…all of us were silent.
I want to talk about how the police in my community often times harass the citizens. How one time they beat up my sister till she could not walk properly and up to now she is afraid of them.
I also want to talk about the children in my neighborhood how they sleep late doing their homework and wake up early to go to school. How they come to my house during weekends to ‘play’ with my laptop. How they are eager to learn.