Written by Mollie Cohen
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| The International Women's Day Parade. |
It felt like a lifetime but this week was
finally the week of International Women’s Day, and of the big collaborative
event with Kabeela! Huzzah!
One of our big tasks this week (aside from
planning) has been looking at the social media to create, maintain and research
for APIL. We decided that the main five we would look at would be; Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, and Whatsapp – from this we researched how these
platforms could be used to benefit APIL, and how they would be used. We set up
pages for both Instagram and Twitter, which are both being used actively (they
are really great you should check them out).
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| Augstin, Mollie and Barry at the meeting with the Coordinator and Madame Leah (looking sweaty) |
On Monday afternoon we had two important meetings with the
Coordinator and Madame Leah. Firstly Sophie and Barry presented the brand
spanking new APIL website, which is ready to go live very soon after some small
adjustments. After this Mollie and Augustin got to present all the hard work of
the past few weeks with the marketing. Despite the somewhat stifling atmosphere
in the Coordinators office (there was a power cut, thus no fans) the feedback
was very positive, all of the teams hard work and ideas were really
appreciated.
On
Tuesday, following a very lengthy discussion (2 hours to be
precise) regarding the amount of chairs we would need for Saturday’s event, we
held a cultural exchange. Our team leaders, Barry and Sophie, led the
discussion on ‘rude words’, everyone enjoyed their right to freedom of speech,
and learnt how to swear in English, French and even Mooré. It was the perfect
end to a long day, and allowed everyone to have a break from being serious – it
could even be said that, despite the hardships of the day, despite the
figurative weight of chairs bearing down upon the shoulders of us volunteers… everybody laughed.
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| At the International Women's Day Parade in Ziniaré. |
Wednesday
8th March was International Women’s Day and although we had the
day off work – it’s a public holiday in Burkina Faso – everyone was up early to
attend the parade in Ziniaré in all our Burkinabe finery. We listened to
speeches from the Mayor, the Coordinator of the Community of Ziniaré Women,
and our very own Coordinator from APIL (the event was sponsored by APIL). It
was really interesting to draw parallels between events that are held in the UK
and held in Burkina, the general structure was the same there were speeches,
entertainment, and the actual parade itself. There was a really incredible
atmosphere, everyone was really excited to be there and to support and
celebrate women.
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| Sophie and Indus making the decorations and posters for Saturday's event. |
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| Left to Right: Mollie, Barry, Mary, Sonia, Dramane, Khader and Josephine. Cleaning up APIL with jazz hands. |
The rest of the week was spent preparing for
the big event on Saturday. On Thursday and Friday our office turned into the
Art Attack studio, colourful paper chains were strung across team members heads
and hanging decorations of birds and stars were attached to every surface. We
had visits from practically every member of the Kabeela team in the run up to
Saturday, with different people across the two groups being assigned to sort
food, drinks, guests, tents, etc. Josephine, Mollie, Indus, Amy and Claver
roamed the market in Ziniaré handing out flyers, and inviting local men and
women to Saturday’s event. After some literal
market research we realised that the symbol for women that was on the
flyer/invitation was actually being mistaken for a religious cross – maybe not
the best considering the area that the market falls is majority Muslim. After
the tents had been erected and the chairs had arrived, there was nothing left
to do but to wait for Saturday.
Saturday was a really amazing day, over 180 people attended our
event, including local women, schoolchildren, the APIL Coordinator, and the
Burkina Faso In-Country Director of International Service – Eleonore Couldiaty.
But there must be a special mention to our guest of honour, Nicola, the donkey.
The phrase “a Queen is never late, everyone else is simply early” applies to
Nicola. After she strutted in to APIL with the speakers in tow the party really
got started. Our guests enjoyed a female empowerment workshop run by Sonia and
Khader, and a leadership seminar run by Amy, Salifou and Albert in the morning.
After this there were sandwiches and besap galore, followed by some amazing
entertainment from a local dance troupe, drama group, and slam poet – Bobby.
After quite a long struggle to tick off our gender awareness raising from our
checklist, on just one glorious day we managed to tick off a magnificent 6
hours. Go team!
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| Left to Right: Amy, Sochel, Claver, Augustin and some guests. Entertaining the crowd on Saturday...attempting to dance like Burkinabes. |
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| Salifou on the mic during the Leadership Seminar on Saturday with a room full of eager students. |
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| Some of our lovely, colourful guests at Saturday's Event, watching the entertainment after lunch. |
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| Left to Right: Salifou, Augstin, Josephine, Dramane and Sonia. In their matching International Women's Day pagne! |
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| Kabeela and APIL Teams with Eleonore Couldiaty and APIL Coordinator - who is holding our #Africa4Her sign. |
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