This Saturday, March 8th, is International Women’s Day. Supporting and empowering women and girls are fundamental to the work of DSW, something which new strive to achieve every day.
To celebrate this, and the continuing contribution that women have made to DSW’s work, we are giving over the blog every day to members of DSW to talk about the importance of ‘Women working in Development’
Today, we give the floor to Bernard Tusiime, International Project Co-ordinator at DSW Uganda.
Tell us a little about yourself – who are you and what is your role at DSW?
Bernard Tusiime is my name. I’m the International project coordinator for the women and girls economic empowerment (WOGE) project. I’ m a development facilitator, and a gender expert with strong belief that gender inequalities systematically hinder all aspects of development. I believe in people centred , multisectoral, needs and rights based approaches.
What excites you most about your work at DSW?
I have passion for working with women and youth since they are the major drivers for socio-economic transformation in African societies.DSW believes in gender equality and equity and universality of human rights and has provided adequate support and space for all personnel to be committed to gender equity into all our programmes.
In your view, how have women shaped the global development arena?
In most societies, women work longer hours under the double burden of domestic and remunerative labor. They constitute the majority of the world’s agricultural labourers. The major challenge facing women is that they have less access to and control over resources, receive half years of schooling compared to men, have less access to health services and legal rights. Despite all these challenges they remain the major change agents for socio-economic transformation.
Who is your biggest role model?
My late Mum Abisag was the biggest role model. She was semi illiterate but treated all children alike irrespective of sex .With her meagre income, she ensured that we all had formal education up to university level through hard work.
How will you be marking International Women’s Day this year?
We will embrace the global theme “Inspiring Change “ All beneficiaries of the Women and girls empowerment project (WOGE) will participate in the celebrations of the International women’s day. In line with the global theme, Uganda has come up with a National theme (“IN PARTNERSHIP WITH MEN AND BOYS FOR EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN AND GIRLS IN UGANDA”) Which is by coincidence similar to our WOGE project overall objective.
The WOGE women and girls beneficiary groups will actively participate in the event through drama presentations, Marching around the streets together with boys and men of urban centres and stadiums carrying and waving placards and manila writings against gender based violence and call for support of women and girls at all aspects of development ,exhibiting their groups entrepreneurship projects products.
The event will be honoured by the first lady and other honourable women members of parliament.
All other WOGE country offices of Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania have planned similar events in partnership with their governments.
