Recent Comments
Mick Minard | Strate… on À la carte: Fauzia’s Hea… chriscrowley on À la carte: Fauzia’s Hea… Sash on The Peace of Wild Things Mollylo on Visual Journalism and the Grow… Sash on Visual Journalism and the Grow…
Introduction to new work on women leaders in India
This work (videos below) was produced for an event titled “Ending Violence Against Women: Effective Practices and the Potential for Creating Positive Social Change”.
The event (click to see the program) was organized by the International Federation of University Women (IFUW) and the 57th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) for its annual conference at the United Nations and was held on 3/5/2013.
I was asked to present our early work on a much larger visual communications project we are working on currently titled Regarding Women of India: At the Point of Freedom — In search of a new narrative for a new generation (on track to be published in late 2013). This project is being produced in collaboration with Dr. Shashi Gogate and it focuses on the intuitive ideas that support the need for and the influence of a new narrative on women of India and, therefore, the stories we choose to tell about their path to leadership, believing they will help us to shape, to reinforce and report “empowerment outcomes” in such a way that we can articulate the world of development in new ways, showing us a different picture (literally) of what our priorities should be.
PLEASE NOTE: The video produced for the event requires 720p HD and should be seen at this resolution. Please follow these directions (see first image below) for the highest quality viewing (second one is the video; click on image quality, which is the little gear wheel and choose 720p).
Thanks!
And here is a shorter version of the presentation I gave. Huge thanks to my friend Winston for filming it for me on a iPhone, as well as to Sophie Turner Zaretsky and Polly Woodward for organizing it.
One Billion Rising: An End to Violence Against Women
© 2013 Mick Minard. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication or distribution permitted.
One Billion Rising: An End to Violence Against Women
By Sorcha Pollak (TIME)
One out of three women on the planet will be beaten or raped in their lifetime—that’s over a billion women who will experience some type of gender-based violence, according to the United Nations. On Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, people in 205 countries across the globe took to the streets dancing in an attempt to increase awareness of the realities faced by women and girls as part of the One Billion Rising project.
One Billion Rising stems from the work of an organization called V-day that was founded in 1998 by Eve Ensler, author of the award-winning play The Vagina Monologues. Every Valentine’s Day since, Ensler’s group has allowed theater groups around the world to hold a production of the Monologues, while encouraging people to hold events promoting equal rights for women.
This year is the 15th anniversary of the V-day group, and the celebration has developed a far greater following than any other event. “Nothing we have ever done has spread so fast and happened so easily,” Ensler told the Guardian. 2012 was a particularly dark year for violence against women, with the shooting of Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan, the gang rape and death of Jyoti Singh in India, and the gang rape of a high schooler in Steubenville, Ohio. “All these stories have built the outrage and ignited a fire burning through the world,” said Ensler.
She believes that this year’s project could be the beginning of a real, lasting change for women. “In the last year, we’ve finally seen stories about violence against women breaking through in big ways, such as in India,” Ensler explained to the Huffington Post. “One Billion Rising in fanning the fire and allowing that energy to continue so that real legislation and real laws, real action is beginning to happen.”
Violence against women is a universal problem and can take many forms – physical, sexual, psychological and economic. According to World Bank data, women aged 15-44 are more at risk from rape and domestic violence than from cancer, car accidents, war and Malaria. These statistics apply to western countries as well as nations in the developing world. In the U.S., one-third of women murdered each year are killed by intimate partners, while in Canada a study of teenagers aged 15 to 19 found that 54% of girls had experienced “sexual coercion” in a dating relationship. In the Democratic Republic of Congo an average of 36 women and girls are raped every day; in Guatemala, two women are murdered each day.
Down at the Dock with Henry Beston: Cape Cod
“We lose a great deal, I think, when we lose this sense and feeling for the sun. When all has been said, the adventure of the sun is the great natural drama by which we live, and not to have joy in it and awe of it, not to share in it, is to close a dull door on natures’s sustaining and poetic spirit.”
― Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
“The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach. I have heard them all, and of the three elemental voices, that of ocean is the most awesome, beautiful and varied.”
“Poetry is as necessary to comprehension as science. It is as impossible to live without reverence as it is without joy.”
― Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
Photographs © 2012 Mick Minard. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication or distribution permitted.
New Video Project: Suzanne’s Project – a specialized training program for Turkish women farmers.
LINK TO PREVIOUS POST ABOUT THE PROJECT
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and Akdeniz University in Turkey partnered in August 2011 to launch a specialized training program for small holder women farmers in Antalya Province, where 33% of the county’s agricultural exports of fruit and vegetables are grown and where 43% of the agricultural producers are women.
This joint initiative is called Suzanne’s Project. Two professors, Dr. Robin Brumfield, a Farm Management Specialist at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and Dr. Burhan Ozkan, an agricultural economist and farm management specialist at Akdeniz Univeristy co-lead the project, and work with the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock and the Turkish Cooperative Extension Service to advance the project’s mission:
TO EMPOWER TURKISH WOMEN FARMERS through specialized training in enterprise skills and production methods to sustain profitable agricultural businesses, while supporting the region’s socio-economic advancement toward gender equality and sustainable agricultural development.
Together, the two universities are developing the technical and managerial skills of women farmers through specialized training in business planning, risk management, computer literacy and sustainable production methods — AND helping to improve access to extension services, credit, inputs, and productive assets.
With the support of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Mick Minard, a strategic communications consultant, photographer and social impact evaluation advisor working on the project was able to produce this video with the aim to capture and convey the initial social value created as a result of the project, along with the need for the project and its strategy, current goals and new initiatives.
Learn how to join the project’s co-leaders Robin Brumfield, Ph.D. of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and Burhan Ozkan, Ph.D. of Akdeniz Universities to grow Suzanne’s Project and support small-scale women farmers, their families and communities across Turkey as they improve and scale their agricultural businesses to generate long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability.
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT SUZANNE’S PROJECT:
aesop.rutgers.edu/~farmmgmt/suzannes_project.html
facebook.com/suzannesproject
ROBIN BRUMFIELD, Ph.D., Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Extension Specialist in Farm Management
brumfield@aesop.rutgers.edu; Tel. +1 (848) 932 9130; aesop.rutgers.edu/~farmmgmt
BURHAN ÖZKAN, Ph.D., Akdeniz University , Professor and Specialist in Farm Management; Advisor to Rector & International Relations Coordinator
bozkan@akdeniz.edu.tr
Tel. +90(242) 310 60 12
uio.akdeniz.edu.tr/en
