{"id":15531,"date":"2022-06-08T10:39:40","date_gmt":"2022-06-08T10:39:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hdirwanda.org\/?p=15531"},"modified":"2022-06-08T10:39:40","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T10:39:40","slug":"i-am-empowered-to-speak-for-fellow-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hdirwanda.org\/new_design\/i-am-empowered-to-speak-for-fellow-girls\/","title":{"rendered":"I am empowered to speak for fellow girls"},"content":{"rendered":"

My name is Francoise Tuyizere, and I am based in Kiramuruzi Sector, Gatsibo District, Eastern Province.\u00a0 I am 15 years old, and I am a student at Nyabisindu Secondary School. From a very young age, I was\u00a0 interested in activities aimed at making a difference in my community. As I approached my teenage\u00a0 years, I joined a youth club, but I really wasn\u2019t getting the kind of information and tools that I felt were\u00a0 sufficient to lead me on my path to speak for myself and my peers on a higher level on topical issues like\u00a0 teenage pregnancies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, toward the end of 2019, I was lucky to be one of the 20 adolescents chosen in our district to\u00a0 begin training with Health Development Initiative (HDI) under their \u2018adolescent empowerment program\u2019. I was trained on issues related to advocacy, Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), child rights\u00a0 and how they interconnect to contribute to full access to youth friendly SRHR information and services.\u00a0 I have learnt a lot since. This training opportunity has offered me the relevant information and self confidence that I can rely on to do the advocacy that I and my peers need to make autonomous and\u00a0 healthy decisions around our sexuality and bodies. It is also a good guide as I pursue my dream to\u00a0 influence decision making and create allies among duty bearers who include parents, teachers, policy\u00a0 makers, local leaders, and service providers to support and effect sustainable changes in relation to\u00a0 child rights, especially, on the SRHR agenda. What surprised me most during the training sessions was\u00a0 learning that any human being has a right to do advocacy. I thought only local leaders and people who\u00a0 are wealthy are allowed to do so. I didn\u2019t know that even a teenager like me can go to any gathering or\u00a0 public office and speak for themselves or others.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What I have gained so far\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Since I started the training, I have had the confidence and the right information which has enabled me to\u00a0 request the Nyabisindu Secondary School administration to grant me an opportunity to talk to my peers.\u00a0 So far, I have successfully given at least 10 talks regarding SRHR and child rights at our school assembly.\u00a0 I have also been invited to the Village, Cell level to give talks and I have also been privileged to be invited\u00a0 by the Executive Secretary of Kiramuruzi Sector to speak at several meetings and other gatherings\u00a0 where I have addressed local leaders and the general community on child rights and SRHR. So far, he\u00a0 has invited me thrice. Besides speaking, I have also written about 15 poems which I have been invited\u00a0 to perform at youth gatherings. In my opinion, the poetry has been very instrumental in gauging my\u00a0 knowledge of the training I have received on SRHR and child rights because I have received lots of\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

positive feedback from both young people and adults after my performances. I have also been involved\u00a0 in encouraging and assisting one of the adolescents in our youth club not only to openly speak about\u00a0 being sexually assaulted by an adult but to report the matter to the authorities.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The challenges\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

My biggest challenge I had was dealing with pushback when I was starting out. I was beginning a\u00a0 conversation about topics that many people didn\u2019t fully understand or were not ready to talk about\u00a0 openly, especially in the rural area. This meant that many people, including adults, used to make\u00a0 discouraging comments calling me names like \u2018talkative\u2019 or \u2018self-centred\u2019 but I did not stop. Today, some\u00a0 of these parents ask me to talk to their own children because they now believe in my contribution.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Future\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Moving forward, I have drafted an action plan and I have outlined the essential steps on how to push\u00a0 for advocacy countrywide. I am continuing with the training and at the end of the program, I will seek\u00a0 support on how to move forward with my plan to take what I have learnt to schools, local government\u00a0 and others.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n



<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My name is Francoise Tuyizere, and I am based in Kiramuruzi Sector, Gatsibo District, Eastern Province.\u00a0 I am 15 years old, and I am a student at Nyabisindu Secondary School. From a very young age, I was\u00a0 interested in activities aimed at making a difference in my community. As I approached my teenage\u00a0 years, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15532,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hdirwanda.org\/new_design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hdirwanda.org\/new_design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hdirwanda.org\/new_design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hdirwanda.org\/new_design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hdirwanda.org\/new_design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15531"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hdirwanda.org\/new_design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15533,"href":"https:\/\/hdirwanda.org\/new_design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15531\/revisions\/15533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hdirwanda.org\/new_design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hdirwanda.org\/new_design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hdirwanda.org\/new_design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hdirwanda.org\/new_design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}