Dying to become Mary Slessor of my Community; I am thirsty for knowledge!

When I think of vision for my life, my community and or the world, I think of Mary Slessor. Mary Slessor is a Scottish Missionary who stopped the killing of twins in Nigeria. It was believed that twins were bad omens and as a result all twins were killed from birth. Now, slessor fought against this traditional belief and today twins are seen as luck instead of ill luck. Come to think of it that if she did not stop the killing of twins, famous artists like P Square in Nigerian wouldn’t have seen the light of fame. Note that the killing of twins didn’t only happen in Nigeria, it happened in Cameroon and other African countries as well. Slessor’s advocacy didn’t fail to make impacts in neighboring countries like Cameroon. Amazing!
If you ask me what my vision is, I will say I want to be like Mary Slessor who created that meaningful and long lasting change.
It is obvious that it takes a lot to create such change but I will put in the lot required to bring the change that I want. There are lots of traditional/cultural practices in my community that infringes on the rights of women; such believes I am dying to change.
- The practice of maltreating the corpses of women who die during or after childbirth is one dirty believe and practice that I am hungry to change. I have already initiated my advocacy to raise awareness on this. I need to raise more awareness.
- Other harmful traditional practices like widowhood rights, breast ironing, meal restrictions, are all issues at stake that I am dying to change.
- Preferencing boy child education at the expense of girl child education really pinches me in the heart; I need to do something to create a change where girls will have equal access to education like their fellow boys.
- I am just dying to change the situation of women in my community.
Now, becoming a VOF correspondent is going to be a bold step towards achieving my dreams. I strongly believe that journalism is a change tool and being citizen journalist is just the perfect branch of journalism to guide me towards meeting my objectives. Being a citizen journalist means being face-to-face with local realities and sounding change as a member of the local community. This way you have firsthand experience of local happenings and stand a better chance to understand and fight for change.
VOF training will equip me with the necessary skills to become an outstanding citizen journalist; one who would easily identify issues that need advocacy and change. It will give me knowledge on how to make use of Web 2.0 to advocate and to create change. It is evident that many uprisings and change made great use of the social media. I need to learn how to use all the available online and offline resources that will help me to become a perfect agent of change in my community.
I am sure that if I become a VOF correspondent, by the end of the training I will become an expert in citizen journalism skills. I will learn more how to be a blogger, how to use new media in journalism, how to go about advocating for change through journalism, etc.
Above all, getting VOF training as an individual means getting a thousand women trained. The training to me will be like a training of trainer course. I will become a trainer of women and girls in citizen journalism skills. I will impact this knowledge to as many women as possible. Getting this knowledge to more women means building a solid foundation for long-lasting change. This is because many women will become advocates for change from different angles.
However, I say thank you to world pulse for all the reading materials throughout this application process, it has added my knowledge on so many important things that I really didn’t understand. If I can learn so much during this short application process, then I can visualize how much I will learn if I become a VOF correspondent.
I am thirsty for more knowledge because I need to create change!