Today is a beautiful hot day out, Even at 7 am, you can tell the day is going to be a scorcher. I am always the happiest on days like today. I am a sun chaser! I always laugh with my family when I tell them I was born in the wrong country, I should have been born somewhere tropical, but the stork dropped me off on the coldest country in the planet Canada!
We’ve got two orientations scheduled today with the information and advocacy unit as well as the traditional leaders unit.
I will be working within the information and advocacy group, my position is the Information and Research Coordinator. It is a very busy department but I will be working with all departments within the organization documenting and distributing information.
The Information aspect of the department is to let the stakeholders, WFC donors, district groups, and the public to be educated on what is happening at WFC.
Advocacy is very important at WFC in terms of advocating for the 5 basic rights in respect to access to clean drinking water, access to education, sustainable housing, medical care, and food.
· An example, WFC would NOT advocate for the government to provide food BUT to change the policies for a person to have the right to grow food. As I stated before, Women for Change does not advocate for hand-outs but to work on the ground to help rural communities become sustainable.
WFC takes part in the World Social Forum, and Say NO to Liberalism, which means NO to privatization and NO to capitalism. For those of you who study politics, you know politics is heavily influenced by economics.
For those of you in Canada, especially Alberta, Conservatives and Liberalists are dominant. Which is sad because, neither of those platforms support First Nations issues. I read the “Social Watch” this morning. It is a report done by countries all over the world to monitor how the government promises to support their peoples. This is what It said for Canada
“One in Three Aboriginal and racialized people in Canada live in poverty. One in four people with disabilities, immigrants, and female single parents in Canada live in poverty”
Us Aboriginal Interns will succeed in this internship, because we know what it is like to be surrounded by poverty. We know what it is like to be colonized. We have many of the same traditional values of the people of Zambia. I mean absolutely no disrespect to other interns or the future Western Interns to come. As an Indigenous person, It is just easier to relate when our cultures are so parallel to life in Zambia.
I would like to personally challenge my own leadership, as I know some are following this blog, to not participate in the World Business Forum but to participate in the World Social Forum. Until our peoples in our own communities, have the five basic human rights, (which many do not have access to) we will not be successful in respect to business and for our community to grow into the healthy industrious nation we imagine.
On the lighter side, Live, Love, Laugh- As Shaina would say “Smile, Life is Short” J
Xoxo
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