I can literaly taste the excitement of having a brilliant TEDx Event in Uganda!

The long Awaited day is here my sweet people!

This for us women of Uganda is the must attend event of the year 2013!

Internationally you have a chance to watch it on live stream too!

It feels like a dream but I assure you that it is Reality!

The TEDxNakaseroWomen team have finally pulled it off today!

Yes it's that awesome, I keep pitching myself to know it’s not just a dream.

They have diligently and successfully put together the logistics required to execute a successful TEDxNakaseroWomen event today!

I hope you have your ticket with you my sweetheart!

All I can promise you is that come expectant and rest assured your mind will be blown by the great talks that will be shared!

Those of you who can't make it to the event at the Sheraton please watch through the stream below!

http://www.livestream.com/tedxnakaserowomen

Our children are dying simply because of ignorance!

Can you imagine that the biggest part of our population here in Africa is unaware of the fact that a mother can give birth to an HIV free baby even if she is HIV infected? For instance am supposed to be one of the most informed people by the standards of my society and I thought that the solution to saving children from being infected by their mothers during pregnancy only came in two years ago! Look at the shock on my face when I was given the true facts that this solution was there since five years ago. How many children have we lost as a result of ignorance? How many children are we still losing? As a community leader it starts with you. I just heard about this inspiring group of women called National Community of Women Living with HIV and AIDS in Uganda (NACWOLA). I really loved their slogan; “We are not the problem but part the solution”. Sitting down with the Executive Director of NACWOLA, Ms Florence Buluba, it hit me to learn what a wealth of knowledge and hope she was to our society. They have designed different solutions to help solve issues like stigma for the infected women and help sensitize our society about how to prevent mother to child HIV transmission (EMTCT). Funny though, she faces the same issue which all great programs with great solutions face today, lack of funding! It really grates my nerves to know that there are so many funds following in from donors and well wishers and all this money ends up lining pockets of greedy politicians or selfish scammers. Anyway, let us get off my personal issues about misplaced funds and I enlighten you on some of my discoveries that I made while having this interesting discussion with Madam Florence Buluba. What blew my mind was that when women are tested before their husbands they are accused of being the ones who brought the infection in the first place. What has that really got to do with the price of coffee! It's like shooting the bearer of bad news. Who said that am the guilty party simply because I was smart enough to consent to knowing our status before my partner. Meanwhile sometimes the husbands are already polygamous! My God ignorance of this magnitude is also the source of uncalled for domestic violence. These women are beaten to a pulp and chased out of the marriage, leaving children to their spouses some of them are subjected to rape and abuse of different types. As if that is not shock enough they are stigmatized by their community grabbed of their property, and left to wonder with self Stigma. Now most of our efforts have been put to sensitizing the urban population which is only 15% and little effort is put on the rural woman. I was really proud of the work NACWOLA is doing by infiltrating the villages where they have centers and through the network they have managed to reach a good number of HIV+ women. Today the number of NACWOLA membership, is in thousands. Now when it comes to the issue of innocent babies dying out of ignorance we all need to stand up and do something. A Simple shortcut to help is fundraising for programs like NACWOLA that are already doing something. The thing that has gripped us for generations where we wait upon donors to help also really has to stop. If we all donated at least 5,000 a month to these organizations we can make a difference. If money is the problem then we can be volunteers to lend our skills to the success of these programs. There is a lot we can do to save our children if we put our mind to it. And in the case of the people with the funds to help sensitize the masses about prevention of mother to child HIV/Aids transmission please for once, do the right thing and give the funds to earnest programs nacwola@nacwola.or.ug . My true intention as I write this piece is to inspire a soul or two to go out there and do something so that we can have HIV free babies by 2016. NACWOLA believes we can have HIV free babies come 2016 so join their campaign or start something of your own but let us all get up and do something to save our children of tomorrow!

My first article for Full Woman Monitor News Paper

Sweethearts here is an article I wrote for the monitor this Saturday and I am honored to share it with you. I would love to share your thoughts on the issue too.
http://www.monitor.co.ug/Magazines/Full-Woman/Why-we-should-rejoice-in--not-flee-from-this-Bill/-/689842/1726876/-/5k7g/-/index.html

Dust yourself and move on already! Bridge Magazine article 2

Trust me your neighbor’s plight was worse than yours but she made it anyway. Many a time when life deals us a blow we tend to wallow in self pity thinking that our situation is the worst. My dear woman of valor much as you are going through so much trials at the moment you have to understand that there have been so many women down a worse road than the one you are traveling today and yet they made it safely to the finish line because they got up, dusted themselves and  pushed on. Honey you are not the first woman to be dumped, you are not the first single mother, you are not the first widow and neither are you the first young lady to find yourself in an unemployed situation.

There are two distinct situations in my own life that renewed my mindset on this matter and I want to share them with you today. I use to throw the world’s biggest pity parties every time life dealt me a blow. I enjoyed it when I would tell my pitiful stories but as I grew up I discovered that people will say sorry to you if they are kind enough and the others will just laugh behind your back. The saddest part about it is that sorry is not enough to pull you out of your situation and wallowing in self pity by sharing your pity story is the quickest yard where you can hang your dirty linen to give your neighbors a chance to ridicule you.

This special time in 2008 while trying kyeyo (handy work) in London, I was sent an email from my Tanzanian friend telling me we can work together on a huge deal. I was super excited and trust me I got onto the first plane to Africa and headed straight for Tanzania. The project was a weekend retreat for women to inspire each other in business and it is to date one of the most successful events I ever organized in my life from scratch. The gist of the story is that I was not paid for my work, they didn’t pay for as small as my travel fair back to Uganda and there I was thrown out on the streets in a strange land. My first reaction was to throw pity parties with anyone who had an ear until this special day when out of anger I decided to take legal action. That was the first step in the right direction though with the wrong solution. After I had shared my dreams with my lawyer Mr. Joseph Nuwamanya, he advised me not to waste my time with a court case but to use my skills and create my own money that will take me out of my situation. He helped me register my company and get a Tanzanian working permit. My first two events were a talk of town success (The Vital Voices women Mentoring Walk Tanzania and the Blast from the Past Shear Charity ball) and in 2009 the idea of women of valor foundation was birthed. The irony of it is that had I not pushed on, things would never have fallen into place but every time we take the first step to recovery, nature joins in with all the required logistics.

The second situation was when after enjoying my success in Tanzania I wanted to now expand back into my home country Uganda. Owing to the fact that I had good corporate connections from my past work as Jamboree et Rendezvous my PR and events management firm, I really thought starting the women of valor foundation in Uganda in 2011 will be a walk over. My friend, I had planned to be done in three months but six months down the road I still dint have a sponsor for my project. While beaten and stranded I attended the Vital Voices Women’s mentoring walk Uganda that year and listened to the stories of the journeys of a number of successful women. Two stories to date inspire me on.

 Hajjat Santa shared that she was widowed at a young age, left with six children to take care of, the relatives wanted to take their brother’s assets and all she had to her name was four thousand Uganda shillings. She invested her four thousand in dried fish fat and sold it to fish markets and factories. She then brought other women suppliers on board. Being a smelly business many of her neighbors ridiculed her but she pushed on. Later she was exporting to markets like china and today she owns Arch apartments one of Uganda’s leading hotels in Ntinda.

Reverend Barlow on the other hand was one time trying out a tomato door to door business and she had stocked a room full of tomatoes only to come back and find the tomatoes rotting on day three. Instead of throwing them away as a big loss she used her tomatoes to make ketchup. Now I know we all have rotten tomato situations in our lives but we have to turn our tomatoes into ketchup. I left that Mentoring walk inspired to find a new avenue on how I can turn my women of valor foundation issue into ketchup. I used strategic alliencies and then got women like Simona Schivas of Gatto Matto who offered us her place for free as a training ground and Agness Konde the then marketing manager of pepsi who offered us the drinks for the ladies during the training. Through different strategic alliances we were able to kick off and the rest is history. So my dears, no matter the blow life deals us, we have to renew our minds, dust ourselves and move on already.

Happy Women's day my darlings!

 

Happy Women's day our sweethearts. Special recognition goes out this day to the men who have come on board to help women regain their God given position in society. We are all especially indebted to the women who have invested in other women to realize that women globally are empowered to live a dignified life.

Article one Bridge Magazine

Our view of true Women Emancipation!

 (by Remmie Male Founder Women of Valor Foundation) buy your copy now, for more information log onto www.bridgemedia.co.ug

As a woman, it grieves my heart to know that a good thing has been misunderstood for so long. When as women we cry out for economic independence, emancipation, salvation from violent husbands or balance in respect, we are not asking for too much. The women emancipation struggle today  reminds me of the time in school when my friend Victoria Namuli abused me that am as skinny as the stick they use to get banana leaves (Lusolobyo) then in my defense I beat her up to a pulp and when the teacher came and found us I was the one who was punished. I had really been insulted unjustly but the way I retaliated got me good canes. Here I am the initial victim being punished for trying to fight for my respect. We all have to admit that the way I was fighting to claim for my respect was a very wrong channel. One, I could have gone and reported my friend to the teacher or two, I could have used any other none violent solution to my problem and all these channels would have earned me an apology and restored my respect from my friend. As women I say we need to revise the way we are crying out to gain a dignified life. Most of us women have fallen prey to the vagaries of being a woman, the injustices and the disrespect that comes out of these imbalances and in return we are fighting back violently to reclaim our respect but this is really the wrong channel. In every human being there is a level of goodness and trust me if as women we reach out for the men’s good sense to show them the realities of our plight, I assure you our issue is self explanatory to any sane human and they will come on board with us to fight for our emancipation. I just will never forget this interesting discussion I had with my two friends Sarah Nsigaye and Xenson Senkaba over a platter of roasted goats meat! To this date I can’t believe we dint chock on our meal. The gist of the discussion was that the concept of women emancipation has been an enigma to many! The irony of it all is that the women who are crying out for empowerment have no clue what ideal women emancipation means. For decades now there has been a misconception that women empowerment means dethroning the men from their power seat. At women of valor foundation we believe that for women empowerment to fully succeed we have to bring the men on board. Xenson being the man came to the discussion with his claws out since he had just about had it with the already deep rooted false propaganda of what women empowerment should be like. His view was that the women who go about fighting for emancipation are getting it all wrong. To that point he believed that all of us who are looking out for women empowerment are just a batch of women on a coup d’état mission! This time the king we are campaigning to overthrow from the thrown is the man. Now in a gruesome battle we were in position to explain to him that women empowerment is for the better good for all parties. Our arguments were that if the woman is given economic independence the entire home is economically empowered. If the struggle to look for the children’s school fees is shared then the family’s financial burden on the man is made lighter. Which human being would not be happy to save some of their money and time? We then saw Xenson understanding our message and joining our team. I also distinctly remember Sarah telling him that she was actually not impressed by the western way of emancipation. It’s not about domination over the other sex, it’s not about playing the weakling, it’s not about making yourself financially accomplished so that you can disrespect the other party, neither is it about manipulation of the other party and taking them down the guilt trip for the atrocities leveled on us by their counterparts in the past. Her take was that the woman should not lose her sense of motherhood and womanhood all in the name of emancipation. Both parties should respect one another and appreciate the role each plays in their family. She was particularly against women who want to play at being men in the name of emancipation. From this discussion I drew one claver conclusion that women empowerment is a mutual struggle for mutual respect and balance. Working towards an environment where Men and Women are both living a balanced out life; socially, economically and intellectually to facilitate harmony between the two parties. Putting in place models where Men are respecting women and women are respecting men is very vital in this fight. There are so many good models in our cultures and norms that if they are not manipulated for power play bring a beautiful sense of satisfaction in being the sex that you were created to be. We were created to be team mates not sawn enemies. Manipulation of religious beliefs and cultural norms to gain power over the other sex is what wreaked all this havoc and brought us to this point of imbalance. There were so many Goddesses in the past that men and women revered and Queens that ruled nations into greatness. A woman can be as good at something as a man, so if we worked as a team and erased the barriers put up in the name of power struggle then we will all reap economic, social and intellectual benefits. We need to go back to the drawing board and say look, we don’t want the men to lose their place but we just want to have our place alongside them. In our campaign we are saying no two bulls can get out of one door, let the bull be happy to be a bull and the cow be happy a cow. Let us all stop playing at being the other sex. I just want to be a full woman and live a life that gives me the opportunities that help me  grow into my full potential. We are asking that there should not be any glass ceilings in our carriers simply because we are women. True we have been relegated to the back yards of society for generations now but we are asking to be a respectable part of society. Women are just saying they are not the underdogs of society but partners to their male counterparts. For goodness’ sake we are the mothers of our nations. No man has come on earth without being birthed by a woman and us women we know that we can’t sire children on our own so we are asking men to understand that they could never be on earth if a woman did not nature them for nine months and go through gruesome labor pains to push them into this world. How can we not award such a person who passed through so much to bring us into the world with respect and a right to a dignified life? We can respectfully work alongside each other. This is neither a power or position struggle, hand in hand and side by side with mutual respect we can realize true women emancipation. Women empowerment is not a power play struggle but just a cry for all human beings to live a dignified full filled life.