I’m making a difference, you can too…

Six out of ten of the world’s poorest people are women. It is a fact that poverty is gendered but it is a crazy fact as the research shows that women are more likely to invest their earnings in their children and families and because they do this they become agents of change. Communities start to be transformed by the enterprises and co-operatives that women are creating in their own neighbourhoods. When I visited Ethiopia in 2012 I saw this first hand and shed tears of happiness as I listened to the women at FashionABLE talk about how they have their self-respect back and are putting their children through school/ college because of their work.

When I hear that women are making a positive difference to the everyday life of a community that makes me proud. I am a woman and I have little girls but really I understand very little of the struggle that an estimated 500 million women and girls have every day when they go hungry. I’m super lucky to be able to say that I live in the UK and I have access to all the same things that my male counterparts do. I went to school and University, I have good healthcare facilities, I can work in a high-powered job or I can stay home, I can approach the police and be treated with respect if I experience violence and I have plenty to eat.

I feel it is so important to keep our circumstances in perspective and remember what is going on elsewhere in the world. Yes we may struggle to pay for new shoes for the kids for school this month, but they have shoes and they have their education and education is key. When the research shows us clearly that girls being educated contributes to a 43% reduction in child malnutrition how can we ignore that?

Surely it is time for us to partner up with campaigning and advocacy organisations to help us to be part of the difference. I can’t fly out to Ethiopia or the Central African Republic and wave a wand and make a difference, I don’t have millions to be able to contribute to a charity and I’m not a celebrity face that can influence hundreds of thousands of people but I do have a voice and so do you. We all have an audience, be it our friends, parents or 40,000 readers of our blogs. I believe we have to make an active choice to use that voice.

There is no getting away from it, people dying of hunger and disease is darn right scary but talking about it and taking small steps to help see things change does not have to be. In early 2012 I was approached by an NGO (non-governmental organisation) called ONE and asked if I’d like to work with them on an ongoing basis, I’ve been doing that ever since. There have been pockets of very intense writing and sharing, like when I travelled to Ethiopia with them in October 2012 and at other times it has just been a gentle nudging and stirring of people.

If you want to know who ONE are then have a peek at this interview that Liska at New Mum Online did with me, check out some of the posts on my blog, look at the #ONEMum posts here on BritMums or read the ONE site.

Also ONE in the US have set up a new initiative to ensure that the plight of women and girls is being explored and given the prominence it needs. This is a wonderful resource for information and inspiration and I’d heartily recommend that you use it regularly. Why don’t you follow @onegirlswomen on twitter or the ONE Girls and Women Facebook page so you hear about the latest updates first?

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Sign up NOW

If you like what you read about ONE then why don’t you sign up to be a member, this means you add your email address (and thus support) and they will contact you periodically to let you know what is going on and to ask for you to sign petitions (it takes seconds) and to do more if you so desire.

Visit ONE now and scroll down the page and join HERE.

Follow my journey

On Monday 20^th October I’ll fly out to Washington D.C for a week to attend the ONE and Google AYA summit. At this summit I’ll get to hear about the successes that are taking place in Sub-Saharan Africa in the fight against extreme poverty and also the challenges that are still evident. I’ll be sharing my journey and learnings on my blog during this time, so I hope you’ll be interested to read Mummy from the Heart. You can also follow me on any of my social media channels and the links for them all are below in my bio.

Can you help me do my bit by please sharing my posts, giving me the odd RT or Facebook mention or perhaps pinning some photos that touch you?  Anything that helps spread the word further is a good thing right? and surely we all want to contribute to the difference.

About Michelle Pannell

Mummy from the Heart is the fourth baby of Michelle, a 46 year old (manic) mother living in East Sussex. Having moved to the countryside and ‘retired’, Michelle can now be found eating too much cake and taking long walks. She lives life on the bright side and looks for the joy in every situation, even the excess pounds those cakes keep adding! Michelle’s blog is a very honest place where she shares tales of imperfect parenting, being a Christian digital activist and anything else that takes her fancy.

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