I ♥ Being a Girl people, Alissa

Hey everyone,

my name is Alissa and I’m from Germany.

Since September 2015 I have joined I <3 being a Girl and I hope with our group we can inspire you and fascinate you about our themes.

For two years I have been studying social work. During my internship at pro familia, a non-governmental service and consumer organization for sexual and reproductive health and rights in Germany, I worked in the field of pregnancy counselling, which also includes counselling in conflict situations.

In this time I learned a lot about women/mother/family rights in Germany on the one hand and on the other hand I started thinking about the importance of sex education and the freedom of decision. Those topics were always important to me, especially in connection of the influence of media and religion in our society, but during my internship I had the chance to realise the reality of SRHR in Germany.

I got in contact with themes of SRHR and I started to reflect about the female role in society. This time strengthened my opinion that women and girls can decide how they want to live their life and that there still is a need of support.

So those are the reasons I’m writing here but now more about me :)

3 Things you enjoy doing?

mussels in Brussels

Traveling - I love to travel and getting around. Thereby you have the chance to get to know other cultures, other people, amazing landscapes and different food. Which leads me to my next thing I enjoy doing:

I like to try new dishes - Either I cook and try new recipes or I like to eat out at a restaurant.

Reading a good book or watching a good movie – For me “good” means that, afterwards, you start thinking about the story and meaning you saw/read. You are touched by the occurrence, the words and the people and it feels like it is real. Especially with a book you can understand a whole generation or historical facts if it is well written.

What makes you continue? Why are you still doing it?

Now, after half a year of internship, I noticed that I want to stay active in the fields of women rights. I had the chance to listen to many lectures and strong women and I could form my own opinion. I would like other women and girls to have the opportunity to form this too and thereby they can decide on their own, how they want to live.

The world would be a better place if everybody would:

 

Listen to the story of a person.

 

Watch “The Hours”: The movie is about three women, living in different generations, interconnected by the novel “Mrs Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf

Read “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. An amazing novel about childhood, racism and inequality.

Try regularly something new to broaden one’s horizon.

Future: before you're 80, you'd like to...

See all the countries of the world. Ok that’s a lot but there are quite a few places I’d like to visit. For example Corvo, an small island of the Azores archipelago.

Next to my travel plans I hope I can say that my work as a social worker had an impact on other people and decision makers. Maybe it was my little input to make the world a better place by helping people and by pointing out that special groups have a need for help and therefore they need other options in their lives. These options require to be enabled or we should support these groups to help themselves.

Friendship is The Answer

Since 2011, 30 of September is the International Day of Friendship. This day was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly with the idea that friendship between peoples, countries, cultures and individuals can inspire peace efforts and build bridges between communities. 

"On this International Day of Friendship, let us cultivate warm ties that strengthen our common humanity and promote the well-being of the human family. "

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

We can find countless stories that are turned into poems, books, movies, series, pictures, drawings and paintings about all kind of friendships. Friendship is something very primitive and relatable to most of the people in all cultures, ages and layers of the society. I know what is friendship, you know what is friendship and a person from another continent who comes from rural village also knows what is friendship. It has a power to unite and it is a very strong tool to encourage other people. A single friendship between two people can be life changing for many.
Instead of cultivating prejudices and hate towards new and unknown by hiding under the words "hate" and "enemies" we should want to understand and befriend it - either people, views or beliefs. Same advice works for individuals as well as conflicts in the world.
Friendship can be used as a great tool for women empowerment worldwide. Instead of connecting to other women and telling them what to do we should simply be supporting, understanding friends who give good advice. A good friend can help to become more confident and self conscious more than an inspiring article or video online. All we have to do is to take good care of the girls and women around us instead of criticizing each for our looks or behavior.
We are very diverse in the world and activists in some cultures want to appear as superior when it comes to feminism and gender equality. These activists are strongly convinced and are trying to convince the rest of the world that "we are right and you have to follow our example". Confidence is awesome and these actions are mostly driven by good intentions but it tends to patronize and discriminate activists from developing countries with the same views. And it is discouraging. That's why it is so important to have friends that are coming from different backgrounds, cultures and religions so we can unite and fight the real problems not each other!



Talking about good friendships...look IHBG team is growing, changing and moving around! Recently we met in Brussels, had amazing days together to refresh our knowledge and learn more about sexual and reproductive health and rights, communication, advocacy and plan new activities! Meantime we found few new and amazing friends so keep tuned to find out more!

And don't forget:
Happiness is only real when shared
J. Krauker

Happy International Day of Friendship!
Always yours,
IHBG

I ♥ Being a Girl people, Ilze

Hey-ho folks!

My name is Ilze Leimane and this is my story!

There are thousands of things that can make me happy but three that always work are

TRAVELLING, VOLUNTEERING & LEARNING SOMETHING NEW

What brought me to I ♥ Being a Girl? The fact that I ♥ Being a Girl!
Once upon a time (5 years ago) I started to volunteer in  Latvia's Association For Family Planning and Reproductive Health which inspired me to educate myself more about the issues all over the world and one of them (with thousand sub-issues) is sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). From the local I decided to go global. I have been volunteering in Europe and Asia, gained experience and inspiration to do something on this topic. For quite a while I am part of the YSAFE group where I have met dozen of inspiring people with the interest to improve the SRHR=Human rights.

Surely world be a better place if we would

• watch more documentaries over various topics. Here you can find bunch of them. Personally, my last favourite is Schooling The World (2010) 
• listen reggae, meditative and tribal music! And here is one great musician Asa (Asha)! You should get to know her!
• read more books as such! I recommenced Khaled Hosseini books (very strong, cruel and honest stories from the Afghanistan that won't let you go for a while after finishing the book). Also, you should read blogs, start with the I ♥ Being a Girl to make world a better place! One more recommendation is this blog. It's about the 20-years-old girl who is cycling around the world! Inspirational!
• step in a another man's shoes for a day. Just try and you will break many of your own prejudices and stereotypes!

There are millions of things I want to do before I am 80! I want to create something sustainable for the people around me and beyond, visit 6 continents and learn 6 languages, learn how to dance, how to play ukulele, how to balance! Live in African village at least for a year, return to Puducherry, live in a eco-village, change someone's life, overcome my fears, change my stereotypes and hike the Kilimanjaro! I want to be healthy and unstoppable! Proud, useful, happy and the most important - to have a choice!

Emotions are contagious, spread more positivity and good thoughts. It will affect other people who will affect more people. If you think that you are too small to change something, try sleeping with a mosquito in the same room.

Peace!

Working Group

Hello lovely people,

                  

Since 2005, YSAFE (Youth Sexual Awareness for Europe) has become a visible youth network working in the field of SRHR in Europe and Central Asia. YSAFE members are active on national, regional and global levels.

I <3 being a girl was the first project of YSAFE, funded by the ‘Girls Decide’ initiative of IPPF 2010.







Now we would like to establish a Working Group to activate the blog a bit more.

If you are a YSAFE-member and interested to become a part of the Working Group, please contact our YSAFE coordinator Ivy Miltiadou (imiltiadou@ippfen.org)

I ♥ Being a Girl in the social media and young people session, #WD2013

#WD2013

I [heart] Being a Girl presentation at Women Deliver 2013 from jauatkales

Maya just did her presentation of  I ♥ Being a Girl in a session Youth 2.0: Young People Online, talking about where this project came from and what we have been doing since 2010. Together with Gehad from YPEER, Sana from Chanan Development Association and Vanessa from Planned Parenthood Global sharing insights on social media and the nature of the internets.

Off to #WomenDeliver we go!

#WomenDeliver 

Hi,

This year our conference of the year will be Women Deliver. This blog has gone through two International AIDS Conferences (2010 and 2012), so we expect an experience mixing something new and something old.

Here are the sessions that we will be present at (apart from the fact that Maya has been singled out as one of the 100 Young Leaders, yeah!):

• May 28th, 11:30 in room 401 session Youth 2.0: Young People Online will take place, talking about digital natives, peer-to-peer social media and activism online with real life campaign examples.
• May 29th, 14:30 in the Cinema Corner (Exhibit Hall 2, Hospitality Suite 2) we will be giving a brief presentation of I ♥ Being a Girl and screening both of our short films (1, 2).
• May 29th, 19:30 in room 410 the European Caucus with a focus on the diversities in Europe and Central Asia will take place. We will be there talking about challenges and possible solutions!

And we will be reporting on the inspirational things happening and people met here and on YSAFE Twitter!

I ♥ Being a Girl people, meet the press: Maya (YSAFE SC) ♥ Being a Girl

We're going back to our roots, both I ♥ Being a Girl and IPPF wise, and exploring our own experiences. And you deserve to meet the people behind, anyways.

So, here it goes!

Name: Maya Koumanova  

Things I enjoy doing:
- travel
- dance
- have challenging/funny arguments with friends 
 

I became aware of sexual and reproductive health and rights by growing up with it. Different issues that would disturbed me, gradually became clear and full of meaning once at the age of 14 I took interest in my sister’s voluntary work for IPPF. I got magnified by its power and have subsequently took it up myself. Since then my knowledge and interest in SRHR has deepened, and now it has become inseparable part of my worldview and experience of the world.  Meeting so many amazing people through my work and hearing their stories has been the biggest driver and source of inspiration.

The world would be a better place if everybody would: 

- Watch Carl Sagan’s "Cosmos" and The Joy Luck Club, a movie after Amy Tan’s novel by the same name  about human relationships and interaction, generational change, the evolving roles and lives of women.

- Listen good old Irish music and from time to time Stephen Fry pod-casts (I know it is not exactly music, but one can drown in them)  
- Read more history/science/sociology books so we can grow as a society and probably the classic  1984, scary but brilliant book which can encourage critical thinking and more thought on where we want our society to go.

Before I'm 80, I want to have  learn how to play an instrument, visit Australia, learn how to make awesome home-made ice-cream and have a happy family.

World Summit Youth Award for I ♥ Being a Girl!

As announced earlier and much earlier on our Twitters, I ♥ Being a Girl just received one of the World Summit Youth Awards 2012 in the category Power to Women.

This video explains the award and showcases all the amazingness:

All this took us to Montréal to meet other people and show what we've got...

 +  I ♥ Being a Girl even managed a media mention, yes! Thank you, Montréal Gazette.

I ♥ Being a Girl people, meet the press: Luīze ♥ Being a Girl

We're going back to our roots, both I ♥ Being a Girl and IPPF wise, and exploring our own experiences. And you deserve to meet the people behind, anyways.
So, here it goes!

 

Name: Luīze Ratniece, @_uize

Things I enjoy doing:
  - Reading feminist literature and blogs,
  - Cooking (vegan), or just eating some awesome nom-noms somebody else has made,
  - Jotting down ideas while sitting in a coffee-shop or library (yes, much love for libraries).

My major breakthrough that switched my interest towards gender issues and opened my eyes literally overnight when I was 13 on 14 were two German books (by a weird coincidence): Ute Ehrhardt's Good Girls Go to Heaven, Bad Girls Go Even Farther and Sabine Werz's Best Friends, Best Enemies (the translations being my Latvian to English translations of titles I knew them by). These were fun popular books for somebody not really introduced to any feminist consciousness yet. Nevertheless, they raised the basic awareness about the existing gender norms, barriers, inequalities and told me that I am allowed to ignore what people expect from me as from a girl if I please so. And that's what I've been trying to do since that.

The world would be a better place if everyone would:
  - Watch the movie Shortbus (2006), challenging the heteronormativity and filling the world with sex positivity.
  - Listen some old jazz. Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Blossom Dearie, Nina Simone, Eartha Kitt can improve everybody and everything. Especially if you take the very dependent and misogynist lyrics with a pinch of salt.
  - Read two novels by Douglas Coupland, Generation X (1991) and Generation A (2009) to understand how weird the world was before internet and how much weirder it's getting.

Before I'm 80, I want to earn a PhD (a senior teaching position would be cool, too), speak decent French and take a bath full of yoghurt.

I ♥ Being a Girl people, meet the press: Magnhild ♥ Being a Girl

We're going back to our roots, both I ♥ Being a Girl and IPPF wise, and exploring our own experiences. And you deserve to meet the people behind, anyways.
So, here it goes!

Name: Magnhild Bogseth (aka Mag, Maga, Aymara, Misa, Mags or M), @maggsis

Things I enjoy doing:
  - Learning languages by talking to people at the street,
  - Debating world problems with smart people who can provoke and produce new ideas and visions,
  - Getting to know the world through traveling, eating new food and reading books

I became aware of the importance of comprehensive and reality based sexual education when I as an exchange student in high school received sexual education as a cartoon show, where the girl ended up with going to hell because she had sex with her boyfriend after drinking a beer.

The world would be a better place if everyone would:
  - Watch the movie Pay it Forward (2000) and actually do it in real life. And watch Milk (2008), and Pippi Longstocking (1969), of course!
  - Listen to Everybody’s Free by Quindon Tarver and follow his advice.
  - Read the biography of Martin Luther King and get inspired.

Before I’m 80 I want to speak at least 6 languages, be relatively good at surfing and have made the wonderful persons I have in my life happy in one way or another.

Ensuring SRHR = an asset, again

 An another take on the issue of girls and development, mentioning I ♥ Being a Girl:

"There is consensus that girls are central to development. Yet, girls continue to bear the brunt of poverty and ill-health, including maternal mortality, unsafe abortion and HIV. Issues relating to girls’ sexuality and their sexual and reproductive rights remain largely neglected.

According to the World Health Organization, some 16 million girls between 15 and 19 and two million girls under the age of 15 give birth each year. For them, complications of pregnancy and childbirth are a leading cause of death. Approximately 82 million girls in developing countries will be married before their 18th birthday. This will disrupt their education, even though women with more years of schooling have better maternal health, fewer and healthier children and greater economic opportunities. Biologically, girls’ health can be more vulnerable than men’s. Of particular concern are the dramatic increases in HIV infection among young women, who now make up 60% of the 15 to 24 year olds living with HIV. Girls are also exposed to various forms of violence from harmful traditional practices such as female genital mutilation and the growing problem of sex trafficking to early and forced marriage.

Disparities in the way girls and boys are raised and treated are at the root of poor sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and development challenges. For boys, adolescence can mean new freedoms and greater participation in community life. Girls, however, may face the opposite: restrictions in their access to choices, education, services and support. Traditional gender roles give girls little say about their own hopes and dreams. Yet we know it is possible to take effective practical action that enables girls to tackle gender inequality and ill-health and to fulfill their potential.

The Girls Decide initiative and the project I ♥ Being a Girl are a step toward this. Girls Decide aims to ensure that girls have access, as a human right imperative, to life-saving SRH services and information. I ♥ Being a Girl, recently winner of a World Summit Youth Award, promotes a positive approach to the sexuality of young women through online tools.

IPPF/WHR also invests in services and programs targeting girls. CIES, our local partner in Bolivia, offers medical, psychological, and social care, while ensuring confidential and quality SRH services to young people. In 2011, over 101,270 consultations were undertaken. Sustained leadership is required to ensure that girls are recognised rights-holders. Policymakers can help transform lives of girls by supporting evidence-based research that reflect realities of girls’ sexual and reproductive lives; investing in youth-friendly services and programs; guaranteeing access to comprehensive sexuality education; and creating supportive legal and policy frameworks and social norms. The benefits of investing in girls are transformational – for their own lives and for their families, communities, and countries.

Empowering girls so they can make healthy choices not only boosts economic growth, but are also essential to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Let’s give them greater choice and control over decisions that affect their sexual and reproductive lives and help break the cycle of poverty and inequality for the next generation. "

Investing in Girls is Essential to Ending Global Poverty 

Fiona Salter & Elena D’Urzo*

* Fiona Salter is the press officer at IPPF Central Office. Elena D’Urzo is the Advocacy Officer at IPPF European Network. Originally published by Girls' Rights Gazette. Article found in the blog of IPPF WHR.

World Summit Youth Award for I ♥ Being a Girl, take 1

The surprise-surprise (unless you follow YSAFE Twitter, which you should) is that I ♥ Being a Girl visits Montréal these days to RECEIVE A WORLD SUMMIT YOUTH AWARD for advancing MDGs via IT thingies aka this blog in the category Power 2 Women!

So, we are thrilled and amazed, and amused, and slightly terrified (the invitation says "bussiness formal" and we have just stupid flowers and rubber shoes).
Nevertheless, we'll overcome that anxiety by overdressing while staying excited and treat it like a big I ♥ Being a Girl Tea Party of Digital Solutions and inspirations.

We'll keep you posted!

New! I [heart] Being a Girl Short Film 2012

Hi, 

We have spent all summer guarding this as our most precious (oh, the Precious!) secret. Below you can find a short video of what has become I ♥ Being a Girl perspective. 

We have dedicated some time (more than 2 years) talking about what are the phenomena of the socialization of girls that we actually enjoy. Be it Spice Girls as role models, frilly dresses, shopping, silly movies... It's OK. We have been taught that these are some of the things girls enjoy, we have tried them and found them to be enjoyable. Our first short film was dedicated to this (and you can still watch it here).

This video is different. It is still based on testimonies and everyday experiences of how it is to be a girl. Just that this one goes one step further than the previous one as we speak about autonomy, authentic choices and that journey when you discover what are the things / activities / people that touch your most inner being. And makes you happy.

Happy International Day of the Girl Child,

xoxo 

IAC'12 I [Heart] Being a Girl session (THGS12) presentations

Finally, here are the presentations from the session we had at the International AIDS Conference.

As Jessie says in her report:

"Tea Parties are casual safe spaces for girls where anyone who is a feminist can come met up and speak up about their frustrations but also share their hopes for the future. The social pressures put on girls are often hypocritical, including how media portrays women as sexy and sex figures, but young women are condemned for expressing themselves sexually or wearing revealing clothes, or they’re expected to be working professionals taking care of themselves (even with a considerable stagnant pay gap), but once you have a family, you are “supposed” to become domestic and support your husband. Gender is a social construct that does not have to follow your biology. Your gender and how you express yourself should not be dictated by societal norms that are often oppressive. In the words of Leynah Gbowee, “It is time for women to stop being politely angry.” There are various forms of resistance to the prejudice of “being a girl” and support for young women looking to make a difference all over the world. In some rural parts, girls learn how to make reusable menstrual pads so that they can continually go to school, and have their privacy. We should have open discussions about questioning gender stereotyping and combat prejudice social norms, like the pay gap. Places like the Philippines are extremely strict when it comes to reproductive health especially for  women, and the results are harrowing; there are half a million unsafe abortions a year and cervical cancer is one of the top killers in the country. When women and more girls have a stronger and unified voice in civil society, they can start to change those societal norms."

IAC'12 IHBG from jauatkales

(Yes, the videos are not really there. The first one is the movie from the 2012 AIDS Conference that you can find here. And the second one is a surprise coming... for now we can say that it was made with a lot of help from all our beloved people in HERA, and that it's amazing!)

IHBG at IAC'12 Best Practice Nepal from jauatkales

(And, yes, obviously, this is the example of the simple fact that talking about and exploring sexualities, pleasure, taboos, barriers... well, you know, the empowerment stuff can be positive and can be - at the same time - very local and very universal indeed. Thank you so much, Shubha, for sharing this experience with us!)