My Voice, My Power is a revolutionary approach to mindset change among Rwanda’s youth. It aims to transform girls’ current understanding of gender norms and replace them with more empowering truths: that girls have a voice, girls have rights, and their understanding of these things is crucial.
It also engages boys to rethink and reframe their perceptions of masculinity and attitudes and beliefs around gender discrimination and violence.
Girls in our project aren’t just supported to develop confidence in themselves (fantastic though that is). Nope: through My Voice, My Power, girls are educated about their rights as human beings, their sexual and reproductive and health rights, and a plethora of other practical skills that will help them to navigate their lives, including preventing teen pregnancy and breaking the silence around violence.
Plus, there’s a very specific element of My Voice, My Power that we’re very excited about: Girl Empowerment Self Defence.
Girl Empowerment Self Defence might sound like Paper Crown has suddenly gone into teaching karate, but fear not! While there are indeed some practical self-defence moves that girls learn, the GESD module is far deeper-reaching than that.
GESD is actually a holistic method of violence resistance education. Through GESD we equip girls with a range of verbal and psychological skills, such as learning to use their voices and assertive body language, how to be effective at boundary setting (and how to recognize when those boundaries are being ‘tested’), and how to make informed choices, all of which will increase their chances of being able to assess and avoid or respond to violent or high-risk situations. In addition to that, GESD teaches girls physical self-defence tactics specifically designed for incidents of physical assault in real life, so that girls will be equipped with techniques that can help them to disarm or escape their attacker and run to safety.*
*A quick disclaimer: here at Paper Crown Rwanda we firmly believe that girls are never responsible for the violence that men or boys enact against them, and we believe in working intensively with both boys and men to transform harmful gender norms that will prevent future violence against girls and women. However, we also know that social change takes considerable time. So, while we continue to work on this by engaging men and boys, we believe girls have the inherent right to learn concepts, behaviours and tactics that can help them to identify and navigate potentially violent or risky situations in the immediate future, such as ‘boundary testing’ or physical attacks.
GESD has already proven its impact in reducing sexual assault and teenage pregnancies in Malawi, Kenya and other countries, and we are the first and only organisation to bring this vital training to Rwanda!
Our first cohort haven’t even completed their time within the project yet and already it’s changing mindsets – both among participants and with the people in their communities.
We talked to Belyse (17) at the end of a My Voice, My Power workshop, to better understand how the information she’s learning in the project is changing her life in practical ways.
Belyse told us:
“I’ve always naturally been very social, but before I came to this project I was judged for this by my family and others. Usually when visitors come to the house, girls are told to go to a different room, or make themselves absent.
It was a hindrance for me to be myself because [my behaviour] was seen as something girls shouldn’t do – to be outspoken or confident and outgoing. But after talking to my family about what I am learning here, now they have started to think differently, and my mom is even encouraging me and my sisters now to be more vocal and she’s more accepting of this.
Being in the project made me realize that people being overprotective of women keeps them from learning new things, taking risks, and being in new spaces and places where we can learn.
The two big things that will stay with me no matter how many years pass are the self defence skills I learned, and the fact that I know now that I can and should use my voice in all things, and that my voice has value!”
We’re always so happy to hear stories like Belyse’s; it shows just how important it is for girls to learn to use their voices, and to help spread knowledge within their communities. One girl can change many minds - from her mother, to her sisters and friends - which is vitally important when it comes to breaking the generational cycle of harmful gender norms.
In My Voice, My Power, while we’re teaching girls these empowering and vital skills, we’re also holding workshops with teenage boys to help them better understand gender and power dynamics.
Rwanda is making strides at the national level to promote women in positions of leadership, and to create laws that would enhance the lives of women and girls in Rwanda, but at the grassroots village level, change is still urgently needed.
In the global South, girls bear the brunt of domestic work and chores, their brother’s educations are prioritised ahead of their own (especially in secondary school), and they are, more often than not, expected to be ‘seen and not heard’. Globally, girls aged 5-14 spend 550 million hours per day on household chores (and that’s 160 million hours more than boys). These societal ideals are passed down through generations, an unbroken chain around the ankles of girls that often prevents them from determining their own futures and fulfilling their potential, year after year after year.
Baptiste (pictured above) is, a current participant of our My Voice, My Power project, and he explained his beliefs before taking part in this project to us:
“I used to think that, as a boy with my sister at home, I wasn’t supposed to do anything like home chores - these were just for women and girls to do. I never thought as a guy I could ever cook or clean when my sister was there to do it for me.”
Happily, after going through several training sessions with our PCR team, Baptiste’s mindset has evolved when it comes to helping with unpaid care work in the home:
“Now we share the workload in the home. If my sister is cleaning, I’ll do the cooking for example, to make sure that whatever needs to be done isn’t left to my sister alone. What made me think differently is when I learned that boys and girls can do everything equally – whatever a man can do, a woman can do, and whatever a girl can do, a boy can do.”
We love to see this kind of mindset change in teenage boys!
Baptiste’s perspective change, which has led to real tangible outcomes in his household, is a vital part of Paper Crown’s work, and shows the importance of working with both boys and girls, and working with teens in general; transforming these negative gender norms early on in life means better outcomes in adulthood, and huge social and economic benefits for all, from family, to community, to country.
We’re determined to grow My Voice, My Power to ensure youth across Rwanda can benefit from the transformative experience this project offers. Help us build more awareness around the need for this crucial work by Tweeting about the project, sharing our posts on Facebook, or signing up for our monthly newsletter!