Of course, being a member of the service and an active feminist, I personally was very interested and favored this year’s UN day theme: gender equality. In previous years, I partook in UN day as a classroom presenter, master of ceremony for the assembly, and many other roles (you can read about this on my post: The One with UN Day 2018). However, this year I chose to be a part of the audience instead of the organizing committee since it was my last international day. I was fortunate enough to be one of the three speakers (along with Emma and Ritisha) to represent the Girls for Girls service group during the International Day assembly of 2019.
“It is our duty as members of this community to share their message, break the boundaries of what is considered to be standard in society, which is what causes the silence to these issues. These stories are from the voices of our community’s heroes, and we should not leave them unheard. The Girls for Girls service fights to lessen the borders between gender inequality, domestic violence, and sexual abuse. We ask of you today to keep in mind the battles these girls have fought and they are not the only ones fighting: 1 in 5 women are raped once in their lives, every year, an estimated 15 million girls under 18 are married worldwide, with little or no say in the matter, 4 out of 5 victims of human trafficking are girls. We should be fighting for a better future; women are the future.”
This short message is an extract from a speech presented on International Day by the Girls For Girls service group, at The Overseas School of Colombo. As I have spoken about in previous posts (The One with My New Service Group: GirlsForGirls), the Girls For Girls service group focuses on helping female victims of sexual assault and harassment. We collaborate with Emerge Global Lanka, where the girls are placed in a shelter for about 3 months and are provided with the preparation needed to return back to society. Our goal as a service aligned perfectly with this year’s UN day theme, which gave us the opportunity to share our message and advocate for the female victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse during the assembly.
When writing the script, Rika and I had to work collaboratively and plan the points we wanted to address. Unfortunately, we were only given a minute to present our case so we needed it to be focused and concise. We initially wanted to include a lot more than we could within the short time span given, but then we broke it down to these three points:
- What the Girls For Girls service do
- Our support for victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse
- Statistical evidence of the issue being faced by a mass population of women
Using these three points as our guide, we constructed our speech as an argument to show its seriousness. We used statistics and data to support our statements, and prove to the audience that this issue has been neglected and become so common in society, it’s seen as “culture”. Sexual abuse and domestic violence are quite controversial topics, but having the opportunity to address them to a school community shows we are aware of the problem as a school. When reflecting on the speech, I feel like we really got our message through. Our words were not only powerful, they were revolutionizing. The fight for equality and female rights has been a battle for over decades, and hopefully it’s reaching an end— with females and feminists being victorious.
Additionally, we also spent some time throughout the day selling our G4G Hats, which are available for purchase throughout the year. The funds raised from selling these hats go to the service’s saved expenditure, where we use the money to purchase items for the shelter or provide for the girls when they visit.