By Christina Blebea | International Resource Liaison
“I love you more than anything and I’d do anything for you. I’d deny myself to build a home for you,” a young woman reads aloud from a sheet of paper that she plucked from a box. She’s surrounded by eighteen other women, myself included, all who study a skills-building course here at the Center. This is the second year the CCBN’s Women’s Education Program is offering this personal development space to our students. She takes a breath and looks up.
“Does that sound like you? Is that something you’d say?” Anielka, the workshop facilitator asks. She’s guiding us through our journey in a month-long Personal Goals workshop. Today, we’re focusing on love and power.
The young woman smiles shyly and you can see first loves and hope and promises flash through the eyes of the women around her. An older woman next to her pipes up: “no, teacher, you can’t think like that! If you really do love that strongly then you also must love yourself and take care of yourself and fight for your dreams!”
Anielka smiles. The psychologist has been working at Batahola for around five years now, facilitating workshops such as these, which are made possible thanks to donors like yourself. The idea is that in order to identify your personal goals, you first need to build up your self-esteem, get to know yourself well, admit that it’s good that you should go after these goals, and recognize the structures and powers that are preventing you from attaining them.
“It’s an existential methodology, but one that also involves fun games and is very participatory. We try to integrate the framework of rights into the daily situations that these women find themselves in, the roles that they assume both inside and outside of the house,” Anielka reflects.
“Who here was told by their family that as a girl they should not express themselves?” Several women step forward and then back. “Who here feels unsatisfied with their body?” Several more shuffle to the center of the circle.
Thanks to you, we’ve created a safe space where women feel free to share their stories, stories that are echoed among the majority there. Ages range from early teens to aging grandmothers, but the same phrases of violence and oppression are repeated.
“We want these women to recognize their violent situations as just that. Before, they saw these situations as normal, but since they have entered this process, they are able to give it a name and say, “yes, I live with violence” or “yes, I lived with violence”, in all of its different forms.”
The women end each session in a cathartic way: a circle of affirmations, hugs, or sometimes just a crazy dance party.
“I see these women leave with more confidence in themselves, they express themselves more, and they recognize that they have rights. I feel very satisfied because as a woman, I am fulfilling my commitment to other women to inspire them to reach their goals.”
A few workshops in, and the very same young woman who wouldn’t answer the question in our first session declares that she wants to open up her own beauty salon. It sounds far-fetched, coming from her sixteen-year-old mouth, but it’s what gives the eighty-year-old on her side enough confidence to declare that she wants to open up a bakery. The safe feeling within this circle of women and our newfound knowledge and self-respect soon pull our dreams out of our minds and into the space: “I want a Master’s degree”, “I want to practice natural medicine”, “I want to start my own restaurant”.
Thank you for accompanying Anielka and her circle of empowered women.
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