Action Health Incorporated partnered with Eva Adelaja Girls Senior High School to celebrate International Women’s Day with the school students on the school club meeting day. The day was celebrated to enlighten the young girls on gender equality and how we can achieve SDG 5 by promoting gender equality in our society. 50 girls were expected to be present for the celebration.
The celebration started around 2:15pm with a welcome address and introduction of AHI by Ms. Ayomide Ajibola, one of AHI’s Youth Assistants. She introduced AHI as an organisation that promotes young people’s health and development and also described AHI’s location and the facilities available at the AHI Youth Centre.
AHI’s Youth-Friendly Health Services Provider, Ms. Nuriyat Abdulrasheed then explained the reason for celebrating March 8 as a day set aside to create awareness on the importance of gender equality to the development of our economic growth in the country and world at large. She emphasized that Sustainable Development Goal 5, which is “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls,” can only be achieved if everyone resolves to promote gender equality irrespective of their gender.
Ms. Abdulrasheed defined gender equality as a state in which access to rights or opportunities is not affected by gender. She also stated that the objective of gender equality is not to make men and women the same, but to ensure that their rights, responsibilities and opportunities are not based on whether they were born male or female. She also mentioned some ways by which we can promote gender equality in our community by sharing household chores to children irrespective of gender, working and bonding with women and girls, inspiring oneself and getting inspired by others, helping other girls or women, ensuring that individuals are treated with equal fairness.
Some of the girls recited different quotes on girls and women. Examples of quotes recited are; “Women and girls are winners,” “Train a boy, train an individual, but train a girl and train a nation,” “women and girls are the real beauty on earth,” “being born as a girl is not a sin, as a girl, you are a pearl with an unbeatable price.”
The celebration ended at 3:15pm with a total of 52 girls between the ages of 13 and 16 in attendance.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.