My Bare Footprint: International Women's Day

Here in Nicaragua International Women's Day or "Dia de la mujer" is a national holiday and rightfully so. The women of this country prove over and over to be survivors where they are by no means the dominant sex. Nicaraguan women usually take sole responsibility for taking care of the children, providing food for their families, all the while they are usually expected to bring in additional income to the household. Here women are typically told what to do and never have the right to complain about their work load or the lack of their own personal needs being met. Yet the women of this country are the ones that will have the largest influence on bringing us out of poverty. Studies have shown that when women are given control over the family finances, that more funds are spent on such things as education, healthy foods and typically result in a higher standard of living. If we can empower more women to stand up and make healthy decisions for their families we can take one giant leap in the right direction.

It has been a personal goal for me, as you probably already gathered, to empower and work with women during my service. Some of the training we do with our women at Pro Mujer focuses on women's rights. We cover their rights in a sexual relationship, for instance the right to choose the number of children they want to have and to realize its ok to walk away from an unhealthy abusive relationship. Self-esteem has also worked it's way in to many of the talks I give to women.

To celebrate this holiday I organized a Women's Empowerment Fair along with an organization called Movimiento de Mujeres de Chinandega. This organization is a non profit aiming to fight and eliminate violence towards women. The goal of this fair was to present women with all the possible resources they could take advantage of in our community to empower themselves and better their lives. We had presence from healthcare organizations, microfinance institutions like Pro Mujer, women artisans, as well as other NGOs to educate on topics such as HIV/AIDS protection.

I invited my women artisans who make the jewelry from shells, which now has the official name of Artesania del Mar. They sold a lot of jewelry and gained some confidence in their products as well as some sales skills. The different booths were set up with flyers and different tid bits of information along side the central park here in Chinandega. We also had guest appearances from a youth folklore dance team, a local orchestra, as well as skits depicting violence in the household and how it can be handled. My site mate Nelson designed a game to create awareness about HIV/AIDs by creating a wheel of fortune like contraption where players had to answer certain questions about HIV/AIDs prevention and transmission to win a prize.

Over all it was a great success and I am definitely doing it again next year! Wear that purple ribbon with pride ladies! Felicidades a las mujeres!