Friday 8 July 2016

Top 15 quotes of the 'Girls' Education Forum 2016'


"Let's ensure every country has a proper girls education system.. Let's give them the life they deserve." Lord McConnell 2016
"The reason I am a minister is because I went to school. I went in place of my elder sister. I am a guilty man" HE Hon. Deng Deng Hoc Yai. Education Minister of South Sudan.

"We must achieve gender equality. Let's do it for the human race, and above all the girls" HE Hon. Deng Deng Hoc Yai. Education Minister of South Sudan.

"A girl who is educated is able to control and make choices." Bonavitha Gahaiha. Tanzania In-country ICS volunteer. 

"We must create a new normal, where girls overcome the beliefs that hold them back" Maria Etel. CEO of The Nike Foundation/ Founder of The Girl Effect 

"Inequality is destroying our world, but we have the power to change that" Theo Sowa, African Women's Development Fund 

"Every girl has a dream. What do we need to achieve that dream? Education" Muzoon Almellenan. The Malala Fund 

"Education cannot wait for peace to be achieved because there is always war" HE Hon. Deng Deng Hoc Yai. Education Minister of South Sudan.

"The best people to advocate for young people are young people" Justine Greening. UK Secretary of State for International Development. 

"We no longer want to be the exception. We want to be the norm" Nyaradzayi Gombonzvanda. African Union Ambassador for Ending Child Marriage 

"Education in Afghanistan is educating three generations. The parents, the sister and brothers, and the children when that educated girl becomes a mother" HE Minister Assadullah Hanif Ballehi. Education Minister for Afghanistan 

"Men in positions of responsibility need to be responsible" Nyaradzayi Gombonzvanda. African Union Ambassador for Ending Child Marriage 
"We can't keep putting it off nor wait for someone else to put it top of the agenda. Because I can, I will... I mean I am." Justine Greening, Secretary of State for International Development. 
"Investing in girls is not the smart thing to do. It is the right thing to do" Julia Guillard. Global Partnership for Education. 

"We must never be afraid to challenge cultural norms if they don't benefit all members of that society." Eleanor Booth, returned ICS volunteer, aka moi. 



Thursday 26 May 2016

Why are hate, fear and anger an OK justification right now?

There is so much hate in the world at the moment: Trump talking of walls and bans for people of a certain religion, ISIS killing people in general, benefit cuts, MPs voting against taking refugees. It is a sad time. A time where the media can focus on all the hate in the world, in turn allowing people to believe that is all there is. But what about love. 

Love is the most important thing in the world. Not hate, fear or anger; at the end of the day none of that will matter. It will be merely a reason behind a bad decision, an excuse to act out without compassion for your fellow humans, it won't matter. It will be nothing. 


Why do you think we have prisons? Academically we could put that down to social conditioning, control, a decision of those in power and their desire to stay in power. But those crimes that prisons punish: murder, rape, burglary, assault. They are all based around hate, a split second disregard for that other persons feelings, that others persons individual feelings, emotion and right to safety and life. Now let's ask a question: why are there not more people in prison? Should we be arresting those responsible for cutting benefits, isn't that a disregard for a persons rights and emotions? What about those who speak out against relocating refugees: why do we have more rights than those people? Why do we have a right to be in this country more than them? They are the same being, they breathe, eat and poop. What about Trump? A few have said he is the anti-Christ, his views to not let Muslims into his country or Mexican immigrants, well that shows a disregard of their rights and a belief that his rights, and those of people like him, are more important. 


So now let's ask a question. When did this hate start? When did we start believing that hate, fear and anger were reasonable justifications for actions, and not feelings we should overcome? When was that OK? 


People say Trump is succeeding because he is speaking out, he is saying what other people couldn't because it wasn't politically correct. So this backlash might be saying that saying something is politically correct or not is not the best idea. So should we just trust that people love and have compassion for theirs fellow humans enough that they wouldn't ban people from entering a country because somebody else with a similar name or religion have done something bad? Apparently not. 


So let's take that to mean that hate, fear and anger existed before we classified things as politically correct or not. It existed in world war two, well it existed in one regime, one man Hitler functioned on hate, fear and anger; he blossomed under those conditions. We said that he was wrong. Classifying people by race was wrong, not protecting disabled people was wrong: so why is it ok now? 


What about Stalin? We say he was wrong too, we say genocide is wrong, we say Jack the Ripper was an evil man. But now we live in a world where we are sitting there and allowing people with the same motivations function in the acceptable side of society, 


It is not acceptable, it is not right to hate people. It is good to fear people or justify your actions because of it. Being angry doesn't make something right, it just makes us think irrationally. These emotions are natural, they happen, and there is no surprise they happening now. But then again maybe if we loved instead of hated, if we forgave instead of getting angry and we forgot instead of fearing then maybe the world could be full of love.


Maybe the world would look like a brighter place if we shared that love for other people. Maybe the world would be a stronger place if we loved every human being, hey every animal, as if they were our husband and wife, our sister or brother, our mother or farther. 


I am going to start sharing love. Simple love at the-love-channel.blogspot.com. I'd rather read about love right now, I hope you will agree. 

I love you. 

Wednesday 13 April 2016

Othering, the fear of difference and a call to celebrate it.

 This is written in response to Zia Haider Rahman's article 'Oh, so now I'm Bangladeshi'  
(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/opinion/oh-so-now-im-bangladeshi.html?mwrsm=Facebook&_r=1).

I read it, thought about it and ran a long way away from the original starting point with it. 

I am sorry if any wording is deemed offensive, it isn't meant to be in anyway. At the end of the day my main point is every human being should be celebrated, and not judged on something they have no power over. 


The ‘other’, it’s a dangerous concept isn’t it. This incessant need of humans to label differences, to provide strength to our individualities, to be deemed normal.

I read an article this morning. It was shared by an incredible woman who I went to a May Ball with in my final year. This article, ‘Oh, so now I’m Bangladeshi?’ by Zia Haider Rahman, was published in 2016, yes 2016. Yet it is still about a subconscious racism. The line “What more is it do you want of us? To be white? To be you?” couldn’t make this clearer. While we may not have racial-hate-statements written across the walls, we might not live in an age where schools, hospitals and buses are segregated by skin colour, we might even be in an age when to a naive white girl Racism no longer exists; yet it does, just now it is more hidden. It is hidden, but not absent, it is there, in all the authority of classifications of every job application, reward, and university application. While that may be to “encourage equal quotas”, how is that any less racist. The lack of racism will be the day when skin colour and heritage are not a topic of conversation, or a rite of passage. It will be a day where colour is not seen as a sign of difference but an optional topic of interest.

So this article is, in very simple terms, based around the announcement of Zira as a judge for the PEN panel. The announcement, as seen below, points out not only the country of birth, but the education and working history of said judge:

“Born in rural Bangladesh, Zia Haider Rahman was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and at Cambridge, Munich and Yale Universities. He has worked as an investment banker on Wall Street and as an international human rights lawyer.”

Now I remember reading that announcement and had one question, “why does it say where he was born?” To me Zia is qualified to be a judge on his incredible achievements. Those achievements are the fact that he went to some of world’s leading universities, that he has worked as a banker and then qualified as a human rights lawyer. Those are achievements, others could be that he has published influential novels and written articles. They are the achievements that we cared about.

Now if it had said that he was born into poverty in rural Bangladesh and went through the Bangladesh school system, receiving a scholarship for Oxford, then yes that would also be impressive. But it doesn’t say that, it says “Born in rural Bangladesh”. The first four words you read about this man are completely unnecessary but could come with many presumptions on his character, appearance and history. I do not know if he came from a poor village, or his family were wealthy land owners; I do not know if he went to a local school, had no schooling or was sent to boarding school internationally. I don’t even know if actually he was born in Bangladesh on a two week holiday to the country. I know nothing about him from that statement, the only things that statement could provide would be that he was born in a country, which by some would be deemed as less normal than the UK, US, or wherever the other judges were born.

Because, lets question this, would they bother putting those four words in for me if I had been in that judging panel? “Born in rural England, Blah studied at Cambridge….” The answer is no, but what presumptions would you make if they had? That I had a good schooling? That I grew up on a farm? That I spent hours ensuring that all my extra-curricular and academic activities would enable me to go to Cambridge, from around age 4?

Probably some of those and not others, because that is what that statement welcomes: presumptions and othering. Othering based on his heritage, an invitation to ignore or excuse his other achievements.

I thought that one day in my life time we would realise that othering people does not do us any favours. Judging someone on their skin colour, heritage, religion or country of birth is completely redundant. What does that really tell you about someone? Maybe that they celebrate some different holidays, maybe that they have been brought up with different customs or beliefs, maybe that they wear a different foundation: but at the end of the day every person on this Earth is a human being. We all breathe, eat (if lucky), love, hate, cry, smile, laugh, learn, and think. We are all inherently the same. The processes in our bodies are the same. So why do we need to place people as different? More than that, why do we need to publicise some differences and not others?

We have come to cross-roads in history. This year is a year where things can change. If you watched the ‘Queen at 90’, you will see that this woman has seen many disasters based on difference, and I wonder did she one day hope that those in her Commonwealth would not be judged on their differences, would not need to be labelled in a judging panel or on official forms? She has seen World War Two, an age when six million, yes six million, Jewish people were killed in the Holocaust. If we included their fellow camp inhabitants, for example those who were disabled or homosexual, we are bringing that figure to eleven million. That is a third of all the people living in Oceania at the moment.

That should have been a warning to the world to the effects of othering. But then the apartheid happened, also in the Queen’s lifetime. 46 years where Black and White people were separated on the basis of their skin colour. That is one difference which isn’t a sign of anything but a different amount of melanin in ones’ skin.

She is now living through two disasters based on difference. One the refugee crisis where 59.5 million people are currently displaced due to conflicts all over the world. 59.5 million people who are causing fear in receiving countries, because guess what: they are different. What is so different? The fact that they are running for their lives, or the fact they haven’t come from the same country, might not look the same, might have a different interesting history to talk about (like the different history of your colleagues or classmates)? Then we have ISIS: something else entirely, or is it the same? ISIS has managed to recruit over 30,000 foreigners. How? Many survivors reports say it is because they wanted to belong, they were being victimised for their religion at home… the reasons could be endless and sometimes not understood.

But can we justify this all with one thing: difference is dangerous?

Yes, that is a justification for all these crimes, right? difference. That difference is inherently dangerous? But let’s make that a bit more specific.

Difference is not dangerous, the othering of difference is dangerous.

At the end of the day every human being is the same. God made us all the same, hey he even sent us the best warning we could have asked for when Jesus Christ, aka our saviour, our Lord, in many peoples opinion the greatest human being to ever step on this Earth, was put to death, for guess what, being different.

There are three quotes from the bible which could maybe back this up:

When you next argue that you don’t want immigrants or refugees in your country:

“…God… made every nation of men to live all over the earth…” (Acts 17:24, 26).

When you next try to justify this fear, or the crimes of the past, or the labelling of people as Bangladeshi-British in every document, or you try to justify a child crying because they are being bullied for ginger hair and freckles, or try to explain to albino child why they are being hunted for their body parts (in some countries in the world), aka justify these because of difference:

“So God created man in His own image; He created him in the image of God; He created them male and female” (Genesis 1:27)

When you try to say that every human on this Earth does not deserve the same, remember that Jesus died in order to provide forgiveness and grace for every single living thing on this planet:

“Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20).

The only biological difference between us is male and female, and that is not a reason for discrimination either (another time...). The things that make us are our actions: like Zia’s incredible achievements. So let’s not justify othering any more, let’s not repeat the mistakes of our predecessors. Let’s not fear difference, but celebrate it, embrace it. Othering is dangerous, acceptance is key.

As Said said:

“Past and present inform each other, each implies the other and  ... each co-exists with the other.” (Said, 1994)

So let’s not use this as justification for racism or othering, but instead look at it as a reason that we can live differently today, without discrimination, and view each person’s past and experiences as an optional topic of interest, rather than a topic of judgement.

Thank you, and for those of you who would read that as a prayer, Amen. 




Friday 15 January 2016

The people in our moments. The moments in our lives.

Life is made up of moments. Moments we laugh, cry, yawn, sleep and love. Moments we hate, envy, eat, pity and dream. Every moment of our life makes up the person we are at the end of it. When those lights finally go out you don’t know which memory will come to your mind. Will it be that boy you loved at the sweet age of 22? Will it be that child you so desperately wanted through years of IVF? Will it be that friend you had but lost contact with? Or will be a stranger: a nurse? A refugee you saw on the TV? A child you met on your travels? We don’t know, we will never know. That is the beauty of it.

Deaths and mourning bring out on reflection, not on only the life that has passed but our own. The life that we are still living. The moments that make it up.

I have been thinking about the people who make up those moments. I remember spending a night in a hostel in Manchester. I met a group of guys who were there to watch the match and they took pity on the girl there to do her dissertation research. I remember going to a bar, going clubbing and having a fantastic evening. But I don’t remember them and that makes me quite sad. For all the moments that made up that evening, it was them who made them. Total strangers who decided to extend a hand of kindness to a girl working away on a laptop in the common room on a Friday night. Yet my memory decided to put them out of my mind and replace them with people they deemed more important. What is more important than kindness? Maybe love.

I remember the few people that I have truly loved in my life. I remember the moments they made me smile, the moments of passion and the many, many moments I cried. I cried over the loss of them, the loss of making more of those moments and the loss of that time. But what about the people we only love for a moment. The people we kiss in a bar when we are 18 and it is the done thing to do. The people you dance with and swap numbers but never follow up. The people you spend a cold, lonely evening messaging on tinder but never meet up. For those moments they were the centre of our universe, so where are they now? What could they have been? Who could they have been?


Whenever anyone makes up a moment in our life, they enter the pool of candidates for the last person we remember. While I hope that will be the soul-mate sitting by my bedside, or the grandchild holding my hand, or my Mother who has always been there; it could be that boy I loved at 22? That child I held in my arms in Uganda? That person who taught me the true meaning of life without even sharing a name. We never know, so maybe no one should stay a stranger, or drift into becoming an acquaintance, what would the world be if everyone became a friend?