Empowerment Through Art

Empowerment Through Art
POSTED ON OCTOBER 11, 2013
Lindelwe Ntombazi Ntombiphindile Mgodla

Many people have spoken written about, demonstrated about issues of empowering women. Many have even won numerous awards for their incredible contributions towards curbing the problem of male superiority, gender-based violence, gender equality, rape and domestic violence. Countless numbers of women have been bullied, beaten, picked on, victimized and even sent to prison for standing up to our dominantly patriarchal society and “telling the truth as it is”. A quick Google search will give you a list of the most celebrated gender activists like Sojourner Truth and Jane Adams, but there are also the less internationally celebrated women like Marieme Jamme and Elinor Sisulu but who play a huge role in their respective countries in advocating for women’s rights.

The main thrust behind what most of these women stand for and always advocate for is education. Emancipation of women through education, is what they call it. There have been a lot of successful workshops, seminars, outreach programs, lectures and door-to-door communication about educating women so that the world as a whole may start accepting that all human being were created equally. Having said this I feel that I should look at the issue of empowering women from another angle rather than education, and that is through poetry and art.Image

I recently attended a Girl Child Voices Fiesta and this concept of Defining Girl Voices through Artistic Fusion was first introduced to me. I was amazed at the amount of raw talent that we have lying around in this beautiful country of ours and a group of equally talented and inspirational artists thought to use these talents to air the views of the girl child child in our country. Because poetry is such a personal and emotional thing, it is easier for the girl child to air her true thoughts to people out there. When someone come sup with a poem,they bare the entirety of their souls, they go to those places of emotion which they themselves did not know existed. The same thing goes for art. When an artist creates a piece of work, inmost cases its a form of expression. Expressing yourself in ways that words really wouldn’t do justice.

So it is in appreciation of where this concept of Defining Girl Voices through Artistic Fusion comes from and the number of opportunities that it has opened up, that I commend artists like Mbizo Chirasha and Kudzi Mutiti, who founded the Girl Child Creativity Project, which has paved the way to this amazing concept. The Girl Child Creativity is a project designed to mitigate under representation and unbalanced participation of young female writers/poets in areas of creative writing ,literature,literacy and poetry performance development . It further enhances the ability of the girl child to develop herself mentally.

So as we celebrate International Day of The Girl Child today, I thought I would play my very small part by praising people who come up with these small scale projects that really touch the lives of many young women in their communities. I hope that one day I will be able to also make a difference in people’s lives as these people have done.

Peace’n'love