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English
Congratulations Nadine, Temitayo, S G, Nuseir, and Eyinade for Winning yWLP's CEDAW Youth Essay Contest...
...and to Riad and Aditya for the Audience Choice Awards
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CEDAW Youth Essay Contest winners |
With more than 100 essays (60% female and 40% male) arriving from 33 countries, yWLP's "We Can Change..." youth essay contest announced to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) came to an exciting (and befitting) conclusion on March 5, 2010. The contest invited participants to write an original, unpublished essay on the most important issue affecting women's lives in their countries and propose solutions to resolve the issue. Winners received cool tech prizes that included Netbooks, iPods, and Flip video cameras.
Essay contest winners, selected from among 17 finalists from around the world, were announced at the WLP symposium "2020 Vision: Mobilizing for Women's Rights and Eliminating Violence Against Women" held in conjunction with the Global NGO Forum for Women: Beijing + 15 and the 54th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women and live-blogged on Twitter. Audience Choice Awards were announced a week later on WLP's "Our Vision & Our Voices" blog.
Finalists in Group 1 | Group 2
Essay Contest Winners | Audience Choice Awards
| Youth Essay Contest: We Can Change... |
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A Few Comments:You may like to know that Lebanon has already taken baby steps in the right direction. The Council of Ministers has recently approved a 20% quota for women in the upcoming municipal elections. We have for the first time appointed a woman for the post of the Minister of Finance (wink). -- Lebanon's Minister of Finance Raya Haffar al-Hassan responding to youth contestant Riad who wrote on women and leadership I am definitely going to do 100,000 times better than what I am doing now towards gender equality in Malaysia, and perhaps one day, at global level! -- Shi Min Tan, Group 2 finalist from Malaysia, in her congratulatory message to the winners Marlo Thomas (an Arab American) in 1966 starred and produced the hit TV sitcom "That Girl." "That Girl" was the first sitcom to focus on a single woman who was not a domestic or living at home. -- Sam Farah to Lara, Group 1 finalist from US |
Among Group 1 (14-17 year old) finalists, the winners are:
- First Prize: Nadine, 14 (Lebanon) on her dream for gender equity
- Audience Choice Award: Riad, 14 (Lebanon) on women and leadership
Winners from Group 2 (18-25 year old) finalists:
- First Prize: Temitayo, 24 (Nigeria) on fear
- Second Prize: S G, 24 (UAE) on sexual harassment
- Joint Third Prize: Nuseir, 18 (Israel) on traditions
- Joint Third Prize: Eyinade, 25 (Nigeria) on maternal mortality
- Audience Choice Award: Himali, 22 (Nepal) on economic opportunities
All finalists essays were posted on our blog and opened for public comments for ten days. Thanks to inspired advocacy by the finalists, we received more than 2,200 comments in just 10 days, with responses ranging from congratulatory notes to additional information and inspiring messages.
Essay Excerpts:
I have a dream that one day, while walking on the street in any country of the world, I'm going to read "XXX's company S.A.L and daughters." (Nadine Abi Kanaan, Lebanon)
As a woman, learn that nobody will give you equality. You just have to decide that you are taking it. Be fearless and then take it! (Temitayo, Nigeria)
One girl noticed that her mother cuts both the head and the tail of a fish before cooking it in the pot. She asked her mother why she does that, and the mother said that she got this habit from her own mother. The daughter then addressed her grandmother with the same question and she got the same answer. At last, the daughter addressed her great grandmother and the latter replied: "I cut the head and the tail of a fish because the pot was too small to fit." The traditions involving how we should treat a woman are simply inherited. (Nusseir Yassin, Israel)
These essays, and the follow up activities planned by the participants, inspire and energize us and make us (from WLP Partners to the thousands of commentators on our blog) hopeful for the future.
( categories:
Issue 26 (Spring 2010) )