|
All I Really Want Is A Home Of My Own |
|
|
Posted by Vicky Collins
August 30, 2010
Susan notes: This amazing, uplifting, inspirational story of success and connection was produced by AWR member Vicky Collins, a Colorado-based TV producer and photographer.r. It highlights what is possible when women around the world support each other.
 My name is Vicky Collins and I'm a television producer out of Denver, Colorado, USA. Our team has made three trips to Uganda over the last five years to help tell the stories of Ugandan women (see Beads, Bricks And A Better Life below).
We mostly do video production for BeadforLife, an income generating project that helps women raise their families up from extreme poverty.
The Ugandan women make beautiful bead jewellery out of recycled paper. Then other women around the world sell the jewellery at bead parties and online and return the profits to Uganda to help with health care, education, housing and other community programs.
|
|
Click to continue...
|
|
|
Acid Attack Survivor Katie Piper Shows Off Her Beautiful Face |
|
|
 Susan notes: Barely concious, unable to speak, and in excruciating pain after having had sulphuric acid thrown in her face, 25-year-old model and TV presenter Katie Piper wrote a two-word note to her mother in 2008. "Kill me," it said.
Two years later, Piper has created a foundation to help burn victims, is leading a full and happy life and is an inspiration to all whom she meets. Her story proves beyond a doubt that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. The six-part documentary below is fascinating, each segment is a little less than 10 minutes long. Watch it. You won't regret it...
Katie Piper is a beautiful, young woman rebuilding her life after surviving a brutal attack where sulphuric acid was thrown in her face, in March 2008.
Before the attack, Piper was a model and budding TV presenter with a hectic social life and a glowing future in the public eye. More than two years on with over 40 operations and countless treatments and therapies, Piper faces personal challenges daily, but she is back in control, living her life.
|
|
Click to continue...
|
|
|
Johanna Kwedhi Is Namibia's First Female Trawler Captain |
|
|
Slight, pretty, sharp-eyed, and quietly firm about things - Johanna Kwedhi is Namibia's first female trawler captain. She is a living example of the empowerment of women in Namibia.
Johanna captains the Kanus, one of the largest trawlers operating from Luderitz Harbour, an old port rebuilt for today's fishing boats. It's her responsibility not only to navigate a coastline infamous for shipwrecks, but to bring in a profitable catch.
And this is an industry not used to women being, literally, at the helm.
|
|
Click to continue...
|
|
|
Multiple Organ Transplant Patient Becomes Doctor |
|
|
 She could easily be forgiven for never wanting to see the inside of a hospital again.
In a young life blighted by serious illnesses, Allison John has unwillingly made medical history by becoming the first person in Britain to have all her major organs transplanted.
She received a new liver, kidney, heart and lungs in a series of difficult operations spanning 12 years to tackle the major health problems that at one stage left her just three days from death.
For many, that would be enough contact with the medical profession to last a lifetime. But not for the determined Miss John.
Ever since she was a schoolgirl she had wanted to be a doctor - and now she has finally fulfilled the dream after graduating from medical college.
The 32-year-old, who took 14 years to complete her studies and who will soon begin work on the wards, said yesterday: 'I never thought this day would finally come. It's such a huge milestone for me.
|
|
Click to continue...
|
|
|
Indian Mother Of Seven Breaks Through Caste Barriers |
|
|
 Married at 14, the mother of seven, Kakuben Lalabhai Parmar was well into adulthood before she came face-to-face with a man who was not a close relative.
In the cattle-herding community to which Parmar belongs, one among a cluster of groups categorized by the Indian constitution as “scheduled castes,” women were traditionally bound not just to their region or village but to the home.
“My group was treated as untouchables,” said Ms. Parmar, 50. And if the community was untouchable, its female members were still more disadvantaged by being invisible.
Miraclulously, Parmar’s life was transformed roughly 20 years ago by a not-for-profit organization called Sewa .
“I already experienced the biggest change in my life,” she says, “when I first got the chance to come out of my house and participate in society.”
|
|
Click to continue...
|
|
|
Sweet Sixteen Results In 40 Lashes |
|
|
 The crime? Wearing a miniskirt — in the privacy of a friend's home — in Iran. As protesters increasingly take to the streets to oppose the oppressive regime, Raassi, now a fashion designer in the U.S., describes the punishment that changed her life.
There’s a memory that has defined my life: I'm standing in line in a long, dark hallway, handcuffed to a friend, while listening to the horrifying sound of two other friends screaming out in pain. I'm in a jail in Iran's capital, Tehran, and I'm about to be served my punishment: 40 lashes. My friends emerge from a room down the hall, tears streaming down their faces and blood staining the backs of their shirts. I can barely breathe as I wait for the guards to call my name. Finally, it's my turn. My friend and I, still cuffed, enter the torture room together.
Two expressionless, middle-aged female guards, each dressed in a chador, or long black robe, remove our cuffs, then instruct us to lie facedown on a pair of bare mattresses. We will be lashed on our backs. The guards grab two black leather whips and dip them in water, to make the lashes sting. I turn my head and see them raise the whips high in the air, then I squeeze my eyes tight, terrified. The first of 40 lashes comes down hard across my back. I feel a shock of searing pain. I'm wearing a cotton T-shirt, which you'd think would be preferable to wearing nothing at all, but I soon learn that it's actually worse. As the lashes come down one after another, the T-shirt starts to stick to the cuts on my back; the whip pulls the shirt away from the welts after each lashing, intensifying the pain. I keep thinking, I can't believe this is happening to me. I'm a good student; I come from a great family. I'm not a criminal.
|
|
Click to continue...
|
|
|
Lisa Shannon’s Job Is To “Show Up For Congo” |
|
|
 In 2005, Lisa Shannon had one goal: to run the 30.16 miles of the Wildwood Trail and raise enough money to sponsor 31 Congolese women, one for each mile, rounding up.
The Portland woman had learned about the terrors endured by these women on an episode of "Oprah" and how Women for Women International offered them financial assistance, education and counseling for as little as $27 per woman per month.
Shannon finished her one-woman race, raised almost $30,000 and sponsored 80 Congolese women.
But that wasn't enough.
In 2006, she opened her Run for Congo Women to other runners and hoped eventually to raise $1 million.
Five years later, she's still working on that million, but she's exceeded all her other expectations. The Run for Congo Women is duplicated in 11 cities. More than 4,000 people have raised $650,000, enough to sponsor 1,400 Congolese women through Women for Women International.
|
|
Click to continue...
|
|
|
