Our Journey
My mom is an activist and is always telling my brother and I about how, even though she will do her best to protect us and care for us, we are also responsible for doing our role to do our part to take care of the world.
My mom has taken me to work in her orphanages, and with refugees and to some of the most underserved communities in our country where people are without water, electricity and services. Whenever I see these things, I also see that women and young girls are most affected.
I remember driving home from one of my mom's projects and she mentioned a statistic to me where it said that an estimated one in three women will experience physical or sexual abuse in their lifetimes. I learnt that this affects their health, dignity and safety - but that no one talks about it.
So I wanted to start. I am 8 years old and I know many family members and friends who have been affected by Gender Based Violence. It's disgusting and sad!
My mom started helping me learn more and set up interviews for me with lots of people who could give different ideas about what was happening and what I could do.
I decided to set up my own project to raise awareness and funds to support programs in the areas that my mom works in.
I'm lucky to have so many amazing women around me
1.
I met with a designer Ella who spent a few weeks helping me create my logo and idea.
We met regularly. Mom took me to a coffee shop and let us have a table where we could talk and work through the concept. Ella was the designer, and she was sweet, kind and patient.
We did mind maps and design sessions and went through so many versions of a logo and idea. It was so exciting. My mom was at the other table and gave us our own space but I could see she was trying to listen to us because our chat was so much more interesting!
We finally settled on The WO Project
I took the word WOMEN and broke it down. I removed the MEN from the title, not because they aren’t affected or shouldn’t be included – but because my focus is Women.
Wide Open! The effects are Wide and the responsibility is too. It means we need to be more Open to discuss the topic, more Open to admit how bad the world and adults are at dealing with it.
I still kept the MEN in my tagline – Mentor, Empower, Nurture.
The WO Project is the name of my project, and what I want to do is Mentor, Empower, Nurture
2.
One of my favourite people, Serisha Barrat, who is a young, brown tech entrepreneur, and her team helped me with my website and social media.
3.
I decided to sell T-shirts to raise funds to allow me to do the projects I want to do, focussed on "Mentor, Empower, Nurture."
The ladies who helped me put the T-shirts together are Lunika Makanjana and Ntshepiseng Botshelo Ndimphiwe. They are interns at Philippi Village and they learnt about T-shirt design from Zee, the Sound Studio manager at PV, in their spare time, just to help me out.
They took the artwork from the artists I reached out to and designed cool T-shirts.
4.
My friends Michelle and Lee helped me source T-shirts. They are my favourite couple!
5.
My granny helped to get tags and labels.
6.
My mom is Bushra Razack and she is the one who is helping me in the background and making sure I think about how my impact is meaningful.