Status Updates From The Moment of Lift: How Emp...

“Many successful social movements are driven by the same combination- strong activism and the ability to take pain without passing it on. Anyone who can combine those two finds a voice within moral force.”

“By coming together and sharing their stories, they gained a sense of belonging, and the sense of belonging gave them a feeling of self worth, and the feeling of self worth gave them the courage to band together and demand their rights”

“Clients would beat up the women if they insisted on condoms. The police would beat them up if they were carrying condoms- because it proved they were sex workers. So to avoid getting beaten up, they wouldn’t carry condoms. Finally we saw the connection between preventing violence and preventing HIV.”

“When you look at a farmer, you’re looking at a mother. Household labor not only takes time away from farming but keeps the woman from attending meetings where she could get tips from other farmers & learn about improved seeds, best practices, & new markets. As soon as you see that most farmers are women, and that women are beneath men, everything shifts.”

Farmers need 5 things to succeed- good land, good seeds, farming supplies, time, and know-how. There are barriers standing between women and each of these things simply due to gender

“Look out the window and see who’s working in the fields. They’re almost all women. If you listen only to the men, because they’re the ones with the time & social permission to go to the meetings, then you’re not going to know what the women really need, and they’re the ones who are doing most of the work.”

“Identifying and removing moral blind spots is a conversation that can be facilitated by outsiders, but it cannot be manipulated by them, because the people themselves are discussing their own practices and whether they serve their goals according to their values.”

“Agricultural equipment that had been donated was resting out, health clinics were sitting, empty, and customs like FGM and child marriage continued unchanged. People often get outraged by certain practices and developing countries and want to rush in and say “this is harmful stop it!” But that’s the wrong approach. Outrage can save 1-2 girls, she told me. only empathy can change the system.”

“It’s important to be able to save girls from marriage, but it’s more important to address the incentives that prompt parents to marry off their underage daughters in the first place.”

“one of the brides – who looked about eight years old – told me that school was the only path out of poverty, and when she married, the path closed”