By Aleta | Support Officer
Dear friends and supporters,
We hope your start to 2018 has been a great one!
Our new year has started out strong with the launch of our Girl Peer Research Unit. Already, ten young women alumni from our programs have been selected and completed a one-week intensive training on basic research methodology and data collection. While we cannot prepare them for everything, we are confident that they now know how to interact with girls in the field, they can deliver the questionnaire in an impartial and non-judgemental manner, and they can feel safe knowing that there are many other women staff members and partner allies looking out for them as they visit 70 project sites around the country.
These young women who are now collecting program impact data are all under 22 years-old. They come from both the country’s central Mandalay Region and camps for those internally displaced by ongoing armed conflict in northernmost Kachin State. Eight of the ten young women were pushed out of school during their middle school years, and the other two are currently students in Myanmar’s “distance learning” university system. Most of them have work experience helping on family farms, stitching or cutting in a garment factory/weaving industry or on a camera accessories assembly line, and one had worked previously as a housemaid in Singapore. With limited exposure to decent work opportunities or careers paths, the young women say that they have at times in their lives wanted to be a school teacher or possibly a tailor.
We loved hearing their personal stories and learning of their motivations for staying involved with Girl Determined.
“I wanted to apply for the GPRU program because even though I may not be very well-educated, I would still like to widen my knowledge, instead of staying at home and weaving… My proudest moment was one time when I was really angry about something. I began my weaving, like normal, but ended up letting my anger get ahold of me. The threads got tangled up from my carelessness, and I had to stop. I stepped away from the loom to control my emotions and reflect. Afterwards, I was able to return to my work and mend my mistakes. By going through this process of managing my anger, I felt I was more in control of myself.”
— Khin Moe, from Mandalay, age 20
Meet the rest of these incredible girl peer enumerators!
The STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields have long been steeped with gender-based discrimination, often prioritising boys and men over girls and women—from encouraging more school-aged boys to pursue studying maths and sciences, to the male-dominated portrayal of these jobs in mass media. With the recent spike in number of tech jobs and need for data-driven projects in Burma, we are working to change that. This project will provide young women with decent work in research firms with the possibility for ongoing opportunities. Young women's entrance into the field and the positive outcomes amplified through our media programs will re-shape commonly held beliefs about the potential of young women, broadening the scope for girls’ and young women’s economic empowerment.
Our GlobalGiving micro-project dedicated to the “We Want to Know!” Girl Peer Research Project will expire in less than one week! On the micro-project page, you can learn more about the initiative and ensure your support goes directly to ensuring equal access to job opportunities and upward mobility for girls/women in a non-traditional field.
Thanks for your continued support and attention!
#JustStepsForward #GirlsInResearch
Links:
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If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can recieve an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
