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Today is the Teacher's Day in India. To all my friends who are connected with teaching, I send my best wishes.
MIND THE GAP.
An interactive data game that lets you explore the progress and pitfalls of girls’ and women’s education around the world. “learn more”.
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The new Indian census(2011), which put the population at 1.2 billion, has revealed an alarming trend. Rising incomes only seem to accelerate gendercide – the evocative term for the selective abortion of girl foetuses. There were 945 girls per 1,000 boys in the 1991 census, 927 in 2001 and now 914. It's now a crisis and we need to move beyond just acknowledging the issue.The PC & PNDT Act 1994 prohibits any form of sex-determination practise and sex-selective abortion.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) of India; 89,546 cases of cruelty by husband and relatives; 21,397 cases of rape; 11,009 cases of sexual harassment and 5,650 cases of dowry harassment were reported in India during the year 2009.
Source: National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) India, 2009
Your voice matters. Say NO – UNiTE to End Violence against Women and girls!
Up to 70 percent of women may be abused in their lifetime. Tell governments that you want them to make ending violence against women a top priority. More than 5 million people already signed on to Say NO.
Add your name to become part of the global Say NO–UNiTE Network: “here”.
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Photo: Firoz Ahmad Firoz
Say NO to violence against women and girls! SPREAD THIS CAMPAIGN.
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Ladli — which in Indian languages (Hindi and Urdu) means ‘beloved daughter.’
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"Worst of all, violence against women and girls continues unabated in every continent, country and culture. It takes a devastating toll on women’s lives, on their families and on society as a whole. Most societies prohibit such violence -- yet the reality is that, too often, it is covered up or tacitly condoned." (UN SECRETARY-GENERAL in International Women’s Day 2007 Message.)
“Almost every country in the world still has laws that discriminate against women, and promises to remedy this have not been kept.” (UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the eve of International Women's Day 2008)
According to one United Nations estimate, 113 to 200 million women are “demographically missing” from the world today. That is to say, there should be 113 to 200 million more women walking the earth, who aren’t. By that same estimate, 1.5 to 3 million women and girls lose their lives every year because of gender-based neglect or gender-based violence and Sexual Violence in Conflict.
In addition to torture, sexual violence and rape by occupation forces, a great number of women and girls are kept locked up in their homes by a very real fear of abduction and criminal abuse. In war and conflicts, girls and women have been denied their human right, including the right to health, education and employment. “Sexual violence in conflict zones is indeed a security concern. We affirm that sexual violence profoundly affects not only the health and safety of women, but the economic and social stability of their nations” –US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, 19 June 2008 (Read more about UN Action against Sexual Violence in Conflict www.stoprapenow.org/ ).
Millions of young women disappear in their native land every year. Many of them are found later being held against their will in other places and forced into prostitution. According to the UNICEF ( www.unicef.org/gender/index_factsandfigures.html ),Girls between 13 and 18 years of age constitute the largest group in the sex industry. It is estimated that around 500,000 girls below 18 are victims of trafficking each year. The victims of trafficking and female migrants are sometimes unfairly blamed for spreading HIV when the reality is that they are often the victims.
According to the UNAIDS around 17.3 million, women (almost half of the total number of HIV-positive) living with HIV ( www.unaids.org ). While HIV is often driven by poverty, it is also associated with inequality, gender-based abuses and economic transition. The relationship between abuses of women's rights and their vulnerability to AIDS is alarming. Violence and discrimination prevents women from freely accessing HIV/AIDS information, from negotiating condom use, and from resisting unprotected sex with an HIV-positive partner, yet most of the governments have failed to take any meaningful steps to prevent and punish such abuse.
United Nations agencies estimated that every year 3 million girls are at risk of undergoing the procedure – which involves the partial or total removal of external female genital organs – that some 140 million women, mostly in Asia and Africa, have already endured.
We can point a finger at poverty. But poverty alone does not result in these girls and women’s deaths and suffering; the blame also falls on the social system and attitudes of the societies.
India alone accounts for more than 50 million of the women who are “missing” due to female foeticide - the sex-selective abortion of girls, dowry death, gender-based neglect and all forms of violence against women.
Since the late 1970s when the technology for sex determination first came into being, sex selective abortion has unleashed a saga of horror in India and other Asian countries. Experts are calling it "sanitized barbarism”. Worryingly, the trend is far stronger in urban rather than rural areas, and among literate rather than illiterate women, exploding the myth that growing affluence and spread of basic education alone will result in the erosion of gender bias. The United Nations has expressed serious concern about the situation.
The decline in the sex ratio and the millions of Missing Women are indicators of the feudal patriarchal resurgence. Violence against women has gone public – whether it is dowry murders, the practice of female genital mutilation, honour killings, sex selective abortions or death sentences awarded to young lovers from different communities by caste councils, rapes and killings in communal and caste violence, it is only women’s and human rights groups who are protesting – the public and institutional response to these trends is very minimal.
Millions of women suffer from discrimination in the world of work. This not only violates a most basic human right, but has wider social and economic consequences. Most of the governments turn a blind eye to illegal practices and enact and enforce discriminatory laws. Corporations and private individuals engage in abusive and sexist practices without fear of legal system.
More women are working now than ever before, but they are also more likely than men to get low-productivity, low-paid and vulnerable jobs, with no social protection, basic rights nor voice at work according to a new report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) issued for International Women’s Day 2008. Are we even half way to meeting the eight Millennium Development Goals?
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Unite To End Violence Against Women!
Say No To Sex Selection and Female Foeticide!!
Say No To Female Genital Mutilation!!!
Say No To Dowry and Discrimination Against Women!!!!
Say Yes To Women’s Resistance !!!!!
Educate & Empowered Women for a Happy Future !!!!!!
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Photo: Firoz Ahmad Firoz
The Empowerment Statue.
Designed by the artist Stephen Broadbent, sponsored by Alstom Power (now Siemens), and completed in 2002, the sculpture spans the River Witham in Lincoln's City Square. It takes the form of two aluminium-and-steel human figures reaching to each other across the water. The design is intended to echo the shape of turbine blades, in recognition of Lincoln's industrial heritage.
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This is a sculpture across the River Witham in Lincoln City Centre called 'Empowerment'. It is inspired by the blades of a wind turbine and stands 17 metres high.
Canon 5D Mk2
F16
ISO 100
HDR by Photomatix
1 Raw file
Tonemapped
Mereng Alima Bessela, age 50, is a successful entrepreneur from Ntui, in the Central Region of Cameroon. She is a cocoa farmer, which is traditionally farmed by men, has her own restaurant business and a fish farm. Like thousands of women in the region, Madame Bessala has no lack of acumen, but needs access to skills, markets and finance. Meeting these needs is at the heart of a UN Women project funded by The Development Bank of Central African States, implemented in communities living along a road that is being built between the townships of Batchenga, Ntui and Yoko. The project is providing training on business management and other skills to women farmers and entrepreneurs, facilitating their access to public services and preparing them for opportunities to grow their businesses once the road construction is complete. The “Gender Road Project” aims to empower at least 20,000 women living in this area.
Read More: www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2019/1/in-the-words-of-me...
Background:
A 200-kilometre road (124 miles) project stretches between the townships of Batschenga, Ntui and Yoko, in central Cameroon. The road crosses farms, forests, water bodies and pastoral areas that sustain the mostly agrarian economy of nearly 40 villages and three towns.
The road, a basic infrastructure that many countries take for granted, literally shapes the lives and livelihood of the people living along it. It decides whether a small entrepreneur will get her products transported on time, and at what cost, and whether more people will come to a restaurant that another has invested in. It determines what markets a woman farmer can access and how often a working mother can visit her daughter who is studying in the city. The red dirt road, waiting for asphalt, will determine if food, income, job, healthcare, livelihood will come, when, and to whom.
UN Women’s “Gender Road Project”, funded by The Development Bank of Central African States and the Government of Cameroon, is aiming to reach at least 20,000 women by 2020, living in rural communities along this road, to prepare them for a better future and access to bigger markets once the road is built. The project teaches them financial and entrepreneurial skills, improved farming techniques and facilitates their access to public services and land rights.
Photo: UN Women/Ryan Brown
Read More: www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2019/3/feature-story-came...
Taken with my 55-200mm lens.
The things people do when they are threatened,
When their insecurities and jealousy takes over.
Empowered
Your childish actions have failed you.
You attempted to destroy something of meaning to me,
Something I was proud of.
Something that I loved.
Apparently you have forgotten…….
I am different from you.
I will not stoop to your immature actions.
I have rebuilt what you tried to sabotage
and I have made it so much better!
I will take it to the next level
and wait until karma knocks on your door.
My dreams will not falter.
I am strong.
I am driven.
I am headstrong.
Because of you,
I am empowered.
Martha Alicia Benavente, from Tucurú, a small municipality in Guatemala trained for six months to become a solar engineer, and she is bursting with energy. She can’t wait to start building solar lamps so that her community can have sustainable energy at last. One solar lamp could sell for up to 200 Quetzals, a lucrative business opportunity for a woman in a traditionally male-dominated field.
In her words:
"There are more than 90 families in this community, none of the homes have access to energy.
Seven months ago, the Mayor of Tucurú selected me to go to the Barefoot College in India to learn solar engineering. I said, give me thirty minutes to think about it, the Mayor said, you have fifteen.
When I got on the airplane and it took off, I screamed! It was my first time, flying over the Pacific Ocean.
I used to be a domestic worker at a professor’s house in Tucurú before joining this programme. My day started at four in the morning. I would wake up early to go to the mill to get the corn for the tortillas for my children. Then I ran to work by 6:30 am. At my employer’s house, I cooked, swept the house, did dishes, showered the children and took them to school… and then ran to pick them up from school in the afternoon. For all this work, I got 500 Quetzals every month. It wasn’t enough to meet all our needs.
The six months I spent in India at the Barefoot College were also not easy. I got sick, and sometimes wondered if it was better to remain a domestic worker. But little by little, I learned everything. I learned how to make solar lamps.
Look at this solar lamp that I made at Barefoot College. Before I had the lamp, I used to spend 5 – 10 Quetzals every day to light candles. Or we would stay in the dark sometimes, because the store wouldn’t give us credit to buy more candles. I had to finish all my chores at home by 7 p.m.
Now, if I have all the materials, I can build a solar lamp in 20 minutes!
Right now, the biggest challenge is how to put into practice what I learned in India and to train more women. There are many mothers here who want to learn and who can benefit…I just need the materials to build lamps.
My dream is that my community benefits from solar energy. I made a very big effort to go to India, not only for me, but for the whole community. People come up to me and say, we are so happy that you’re back. Now we will have light!”
Martha Alicia Benavente, 45 years old, is a mother of four children whom she raised alone after her husband passed away. She has recently graduated as a solar engineer from the Barefoot College in India, through the UN Joint Programme on Accelerating Progress towards the Economic Empowerment of Rural Women implemented by FAO, WFP, IFAD and UN Women in Guatemala, and funded by the Governments of Norway and Sweden. Her story relates to the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7, on access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all; as well as SDG 5 on gender equality and women’s empowerment and SDG 8, which promotes decent work and sustainable economic empowerment for all.
Photo: UN Women/Ryan Brown
Read more first-person stories of sustainable development challenges and change: www.unwomen.org/en/news/editorial-series/from-where-i-stand
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry delivers remarks at the launch event for U.S. Global Strategy to Empower Adolescent Girls, at the Department of State in Washington, D.C., on March 15, 2016. [State Department Photo/Public Domain]
"Empowerment" by Stephen Broadbent on Waterside South/City Square. Designed by the artist, sponsored by Alston Power (now Siemens) and completed in 2002.
Confidence to tackle dreams, the increasing will to strengthen ones self is a great virtue.
This shot is a genuine moment of a little island boy, stretching out his arms towards the sky while I never asked for it. It isn't staged whatsoever, and lies completely on his own will. The yacht in the background brings something personal to me. Since a small kid I always wanted to be a naval architect, designing yachts and this was my dream. Here is see this boy, living his life, looking committed to strive for his own dreams, something I always wanted to do. So this picture, mirrors my ambition as a small boy.. and means alot to me.
Visit my new personal website, plz :) : Fabi Fliervoet Photography
Empowering Women..........International Women’s Day, 8 March 2013
An artisan making a bamboo basket at West Bengal State Handicrafts Expo 2012 at Milan Mela, Kolkata
India’s largest handicraft’s fair, an annual event displays the workmanship of the artisans of West Bengal, the neglected frontrunners of traditional art of the state.
Around 3000 participants from almost every districts of West Bengal display their art of jute, cane furnitures and baskets, handloom products, Totem poles made of bamboo shoots, 'Chhau' masks, wood carvings, wooden and clay dolls, Madhubani and other traditional paintings, sawdust art, terracotta, wooden and coconut shell artifacts and other home decors.
The traditional origins based on culture and mythology, the workmanships, the richness of ideas, the brilliant combination of pure simplicity and glamour bring an amazing experience to truly understand their talent.
The Expo spreads over an area of 82,000 sq. ft. and has incurred a total sales of Rs.859.00 lakh (£1 million pound) in the year 2010-11 and Rs.1076.63 lakh (£1.25 million pound) in 2011-12. It is the initiative of the Department of Micro and Small Scale Enterprises and Textiles, Government of West Bengal, organized every year with the aim to provide the artisans an exposure to the urban markets, know their taste and interact with the buyers or exporters directly, so that they can get orders for their products all throughout the year.
Beautiful Bengal, India
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry delivers remarks at the launch event for U.S. Global Strategy to Empower Adolescent Girls, at the Department of State in Washington, D.C., on March 15, 2016. [State Department Photo/Public Domain]
Empowering Women..........International Women’s Day, 8 March 2013
An artisan looking at her hand-carved Totem poles made of bamboo shoots at West Bengal State Handicrafts Expo 2012 at Milan Mela, Kolkata
India’s largest handicraft’s fair, an annual event displays the workmanship of the artisans of West Bengal, the neglected frontrunners of traditional art of the state.
Around 3000 participants from almost every districts of West Bengal display their art of jute, cane furnitures and baskets, handloom products, Totem poles made of bamboo shoots, 'Chhau' masks, wood carvings, wooden and clay dolls, Madhubani and other traditional paintings, sawdust art, terracotta, wooden and coconut shell artifacts and other home decors.
The traditional origins based on culture and mythology, the workmanships, the richness of ideas, the brilliant combination of pure simplicity and glamour bring an amazing experience to truly understand their talent.
The Expo spreads over an area of 82,000 sq. ft. and has incurred a total sales of Rs.859.00 lakh (£1 million pound) in the year 2010-11 and Rs.1076.63 lakh (£1.25 million pound) in 2011-12. It is the initiative of the Department of Micro and Small Scale Enterprises and Textiles, Government of West Bengal, organized every year with the aim to provide the artisans an exposure to the urban markets, know their taste and interact with the buyers or exporters directly, so that they can get orders for their products all throughout the year.
Beautiful Bengal, India
Another trip down Memory Lane ...
These photos are from a shoot I did way back in September 2003; I was just starting out with digital cameras and working with models. I was equally clueless in both areas. I think I was using a Olympus and a Kodak digital camera. I also noticed that back at that time I was doing a lot of very tight close-ups to the detriment of others. Lessons learned.
The model here is a young lady named Anna; she was one of favorite models back then. Always fun to shoot with - great personality, sweet and sassy, gorgeous body, and very sharp. We didn't have themes back then, we just let the mood decide her outfits - and apparently this included a fitness shoot.
I took these photos at Westchester Lagoon, Anchorage, Alaska on a gorgeous late afternoon in September 2003. I miss those days!