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| Megha Venketasamy |
A large part of change and effecting change outside of you is to welcome and nurture change within. Megha Venketasamy, a phenomenal activist from Mauritius, shows the way.
I have had my challenges. Life has gifted me with enough
food, enough clothes, enough of everything and I was given the chance to go
university. I worked, I learned, I met people and yet, deep within I carried
something terrible - I carried a story. There was one story that I hated most
for twenty seven years and it was my story, this painful one. This story made
me sick and I was heavily sick, feeding myself on medications. I have seen my
mother, my aunts, my teachers, women - being tortured and abused. And yet, they
remained in their abusive relationships. Girls are domesticated and forced to
stay wedded, no matter what. This phrase “till death tears you apart” was one
of the first gifts of womanhood. I got married at the age of twenty four because my
family pressured my mother by saying that “it
was time for Megha to get married”. It was a love marriage, but something
was not going fine. I could not figure out what it was. It took me three years
to realize that I was being psychologically and emotionally victimized everyday
by a man who had his own pains and dark memories.
I am from Mauritius, known for its very high literacy rate
among African countries, and is an island, where girls are equally as educated
as boys are. Girls have access to the same resources but once schooling ends,
the scenario changes suddenly. Some of us, if not all, shall have to play it low
for the rest of our lives; some of us, if not all, have to accept that being
tortured is part of any normal relationship; some of us, if not all, shall have
to sacrifice all our dreams for the sake of our family’s happiness; some of us,
if not all, shall been domesticated to believe that we are less. My own story taught
me how gender blind I was and once the veil came down I understood that the
time had arrived to embark on a different journey. I went from being sadly
married to happily divorced, needless to say, it created havoc in my family. I
opted for more active engagement on issues dear to me “women issues, women
empowerment.”
My intention is simple: to be a change maker and ensure that the
coming generations of women in my family will be brought up with gender openness.
This often takes me to my little niece of seven. My day is split with my
professional work as a project manager, trainer, life coach and with my active
gender engagements in Women In Politics as Project Manager, in Men Against
Violence as Training Designer, in WIN Leadership Programme as a training
adapter. I act as a volunteer for these projects but it’s a whole set of
responsibilities in its own. I derive a sense of accomplishment which I find
nowhere.
I have always felt something was missing in life, deep down I
felt incomplete, until 2010. That year hit really high for me. In March 2010, I
quit my five-figures-salaried job and had no real plan. By the end of April
2010, I cried to God for help in one of my endless conversations and said, “Can’t
you see, I’m going crazy? I’m lost, so please do something about it!” When you
ask, it’s given right away. The next day, I saw an advertisement for a 9-days
leadership programme for women offered by an NGO, known as Women In Networking.
I enrolled for the leadership programme, went for the interview and got
selected to be part of a group of twenty five women.
On induction day, I felt like running away all nauseous. I
was so sick in my skin, I was so shy (I am, still) and I was so introverted (I
am, still). I was emotionally unmanageable. What came out from this journey were
glimpses of who I am deep within. It hit me hard. I ended up realizing that the
missing thing in my life was simply “my soul was urging to give back to
society; my soul was longing to walk besides women”. From then on, I began a
wonderful journey of sharing, learning, growth and self development. I could
have opted to work in other areas in society, there is so much to be done, yet
I opted to focus all my energies on women. I cannot explain why, perhaps that’s
where my soul is aligned today, for I understand so well the challenges, the
joys, pains, fears and so much more linked to being a woman.
I believe in women empowerment but on a broader dimension,
it’s beyond simply capacity building or training. Empowerment is about letting
others open their wings and let them fly, rather than standing by them all the
time. Women’s empowerment goes beyond capacity building and training, it means
let them handle things and does not matter if they fall out and hurt
themselves. They will still learn and grow that’s the essence of life.
Some key challenges: in my journey were my own self-limiting
beliefs, to start with. The major hindrance is and remain, our beliefs and
therefore, my own beliefs. Working on grass roots or even on different levels
of society with women and men -> we can easily bring in our own thoughts and
beliefs and “déjà vu” attitude. People are much more than just beliefs and
attitudes. The other issue is time, and I am working on time management.
Thirdly, funding - as an NGO, we work in a field where people are reluctant and
not willing to fund our awareness and empowerment activities. Due to lack of
finance, we cannot engage into too many activities and there are times, when we
feel we are limited. There’s so much we will like to do. In Mauritius and I
believe in many countries, you often get called all sort of names for engaging
in gender advocacy. We so often hear people say that because of women and men
like us, “other women will suffer”.
Women work too much, they are basically employed in three
different levels: professionally, at home and in society. And most of the time,
despite their willingness to join NGOs, to go and learn. They often have to
make a choice. And they choose to play it small for their families’ happiness. Women
have been domesticated for centuries and even in an island like Mauritius,
things have not evolved much despite our high literacy level. Women have been
handed over patterns and in societies where religions are omnipresent, these
patterns are bound to be transmitted from generations to generations. Women are
taught to be play it small, taught that they are limited and taught that they
are responsible for anything wrongs that happens. I live in a society where the
self-esteem issue has hit low on the barometer.
My dream for women is more than just reaching 50/50 in decision
making, in parliament, in corporate world. I dream of a
world where little girls and boys shall be raised with equal standards and
equal values, a world where we shall be fully gender aware and gender
respectful, a world where little girls shall be taught that they have no limits
to their dreams and if things go wrong, it's part of learning and growing. I
believe it is possible, if we do not witness this, the coming generations shall!
