Change starts with you

International Women’s Day, celebrated annually on March 8, is now behind us and we have quickly moved on to other news items of the day. 

Some of news items dominating discourse in our country are the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) mid-term access and the glitches therein and the recently launched Parish Development Model (PDM). 

Next year, we will again celebrate Women’s Day with another theme, medals and statistics and then set some more goals which may or may not be met.

But when all is said and done, after words such as emancipation, gender equality, parity, breaking biases and government’s obligation to achieve the same have been thrown around, true change comes down to the family unit, to parents raising their children to be confident, have high esteem and avail them opportunity to  explore different disciplines in life. 

It can even be as basic as ensuring that they are back in school even after the two years of lockdown or that those that got pregnant along the way are not thrown by the wayside as immoral adolescents who were not obedient enough to fight the lust of the flesh, (never mind that some were defiled) but are counselled and helped to get back in school, complete their education cycle and perhaps be the better for it in the future. 

It is about giving equal opportunities for all children in a family to thrive regardless of their gender. It should be about equipping them not only with what our formal school curriculum serves but ensuring that skills such as financial literacy, critical thinking, continually building their self-esteem and confidence  and the like are ingrained in them from an early age in preparation for adulthood.

Let us not raise our children to be handicapped by limiting their scope of exposure and study due to traditional biases and then when they are adults expect that all the work will be left to the government or activists to provide a semblance of programmes that seem to promote gender equality and emancipation. 

Government projects such as the PDM will not optimally benefit mentally handicapped women or men and no amount of money from NSSF mid-term access will effectively and permanently change the life of a financially inadequate and mentally malnourished adult.  

Yes, the government has a mandate to promote development for all but how successful are these endeavours if the rest of us sit back and wait for ‘’government to help us”.  

Let us raise our children regardless of gender to be self-sufficient people who are secure enough to thrive and let others thrive. 

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