PLAY at Prakke Gallery

Tonight the WfWI Ldn JLC hosted our final fundraising event for ’09 at Prakke Gallery in Mayfair.

Zainab at Lucio’s

Last night the WfWI London Leadership Circle hosted a inner at Lucio’s in South Kensington in honor of Zainab, our CEO. It’s been a great year – the charity was the recipient of a large donation from the Clinton Global Initiative and was recently showcased on “The Oprah Winfrey Show”. I had the opportunity to sit next to ZS at the event – we discussed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, potential to build out in Kashmir and the work the JLC has done this last year.

Linda M. on Rwanda

Last night Linda M. spoke to WfWI Ldn JLC about her experience reporting the Rwanda civil war (1994) in which approximately one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. Since the genocide she has worked tirelessly to reveal the responsible parties. WfWI provides vocational skills training in Kigali, and Linda M. was kind enough to recognise our work in the region. It is through this kindness, she said, as well as clean water, fertile land, and employment opportunities that Rwanda was able to recover as remarkably as it has (48% of lawmakers in Rwanda are women which also indicates that perhaps the western world could learn a thing or two from Rwanda). I was personally intrigued by Linda M.’s talk about rape used as a weapon of war and its ability to spread like a “contagion” which she argues is behind the widespread rape pandemic in the DRC. I was also struck by her ability to feel great empathy not only towards the victims of the genocide but also the perpetrators when she described both groups were “victims of vicious and vile propaganda”.

Regent’s Park Summer Race 10k Run

This morning a handful of us from the WfWI Ldn JLC ran in the Regent’s Park Summer Race to raise money for women survivors of war. It was the first competitive sporting event I’d participated in since high school. The first two laps around Regent’s Park were easy, but the summer heat and blazing sun wore on me during the third and final lap. I still managed to beat my target time by a few minutes, finishing the 10k in 51 minutes and 45 seconds, ranking 29 out of 130 women running in the event.

Summer Soiree

Last week we hosted a summer soiree at Bungalow8 to raise money for women survivors of war.

Bosnia & Herzegovina Luncheon

Part of the JLC’s fundraising goal is to fund a seedling-sales business in Bosnia. Late last week we met with the country directors of Bosnia & Herzegovina and Kosovo. WfWI hires local women to work “on the ground” and negotiate the country’s bureaucracy and political system in order to aid women survivors of war. The two country directors gave us insight into the impact war has had on women in Bosnia and Kosovo, particularly since these women are often left uneducated, unskilled and widowed.

WfWI Gala

Last week, WfWI held their annual gala at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. The theme was a Middle Eastern one; hoummus and olives were served, and a belly dancer/singer and her band entertained the 450+ guests who were there to support the organisation and its cause: providing financial and emotional support to women survivors of war. A number of us were lucky to have met ZS, who founded the organisation fifteen years ago after visiting Bosnia and learning about the women’s plight during the civil war.

CNA event

Wednesday night we held our first Ldn JLC-sponsored fundraising event. At the Soho House, CNA read from her Orange Award-winning novel Half of a Yellow Sun, the book which inspired me to sponsor a woman in Nigeria. That night I learned that not only does she have a way with words (CNA is as casual speaking literarily as a pro-basketball player dribbling a ball at the neighbourhood court) but also with humour. In addition to autographing my copy of Sun, she sketched what was meant to look like my face to which I responded that her talents clearly lay in the literary rather than also the artistic realm.

After reading a few passages from the houseboy and the heroine’s points of views, we held a Q&A. In writing Sun, CNA was inspired by her family’s stories from life in Nigeria during the Biafra civil war. She also spoke about how her writing comes from a “place of discontent” and described how until people began treating each other with compassion, she would always find a reason to write. In addition to promoting her recently-published book of short stories, she is planning her next novel, another piece of historical fiction.

My question to CNA was one I’d always wondered since reading the book for the first time more than two years ago. I asked her about critics’ comparison of the novel to Chinua A.’s Things Fall Apart, the seminal Nigerian novel. After reading her book for the first time, I re-read Things Fall Apart only to find that the two novels are completely unlike in terms of narrative style and even themes. I asked CNA how CA’s work inspires her own and what was her response to critics’ lumping their works together. CNA was thankful for the opportunity to assert that yes, their works are completely different in terms of style (hers is clearly the result of a western education and immersion in western literature) and themes (her work has a robust feminist slant). That said, she describes growing up in what used to be CA’s house in Nigeria, to which her editor responded “was the most interesting thing about” CNA. While the audience laughed, I was struck by the sometimes subtle and other times obvious ways Fate rears her head.

After the event, a group of us dined at the Groucho Club. One of the guests, a doctor whose speciality is pain, talked about how CNA’s work interests him because it presents torture from a literary perspective. The doctor organises annual medical conferences where experts discuss the psychological and physiological effects of torture, much of which happens in the Africa and Middle East during periods of strife. In central London, he and his colleagues treat recent migrants who wear on their bodies the trauma and scars of their country’s conflict, poverty and corruption. Listening to him reminded me that in order to succeed in our organisation’s mission to support women survivors of war, we need to come as close as we can to understanding their plight and that the best way to do so short of visiting these women is by organising more educational events.

International Women’s Day at the Albion Gallery

Last Thursday we held our first awareness- and fund-raising event in 2009 at the Albion Gallery in celebration of International Women’s Day.  Elizabeth J. exhibited her photographs of women in Rwanda, Mandy made up the models for Avis C.’s fashion show, and people shopped ’til they dropped at the souk (thank goodness low consumer confidence hasn’t disrupted charitable giving… or buying for that matter!).

The morning after the event I remembered a line from one of my favorite TED Talks, “Becoming Buddha: On the Web”, where Dr. Bob T. describes how “the key to compassion is that it is more fun… generosity is more fun – that is the key”. While Elizabeth J.’s photography is sobering in its subject, it is also a celebration of the Rwandan women’s survival in a war-torn country which still remains a conflict zone fifteen years later. The colours Elizabeth J. teased out of her photographs, the smooth finish of Avis C.’s silk tie-dye dresses and the unabashed youth of the fashion runway models created an all-consuming positive spirit which honoured the women for whom we raised money and awareness.

http://www.ejordanphotography.com/

http://www.womenforwomen.org/