NEWSWEEK: SOPHIA RISING: THE STORY OF ONE GIRL DEFYING THE ODDS

We’re excited to share an article from GlobalGirl Media Kosovo. Despite the isolation these girls face–many of the girl who work with GGM Kosovo have never even travelled outside Kosovo–their voices have been heard internationally through their work with GGM. Written by and about young women, this article focuses on five girls from across Kosovo, all of whom have achieved international recognition, despite the difficulties of travelling outside Kosovo.

In spite of the country’s visa isolation, Kosovo’s ambitious and passionate girls are breaking cultural and societal limits, showing that hard work can pass through any barrier.

Here is a snapshot of some of these girls.

Mrika Sefa: Pianist

Mrika from Gjakova, is a 26 year old young woman, who began playing the piano when she was nine. Her passion for the piano began in her familial settings, where she was always surrounded by music.

“Music was part of our family luncheons and dinners, our festivities and even our most somber moments. My uncle, Florent Nushi, was a singer. He would sing as if he would talk. I always believed that the guitar was an extension of his body. And, just like this, my brothers, cousins and I would join him in singing. In the beginning I would sing and later on I began taking piano lessons.”

As a fourteen year old, Mrika began facing life’s challenges alone at the Prishtina Music High School. She was a regular participant in many concerns, among them the international music competitions organized from the “ArsKosova” Foundation. These competitions, during her childhood, she said, have really been a significant contributor to building her discipline and her work ethic, which led to her continuing her higher education at the “Musik-Akademie der Stadt” in Bassles, Switzerland, in “Hochschule der Künste” and “Hochschule für Musik” in Lucerne, Switzerland.

“Beginning my studies in Switzerland has not been easy, since there is no easy transition from Kosovo to Switzerland. They are two completely different realities”.

Yet, she has managed to partake in the “Yamaha” competition in Bern, where she won first prize. In the “Concours Musical de France”, she also won second place.

“I was very happy with these results, given that during my journey everything went wrong. Prior to joining the last competition, it seemed as if I was living a Federico Fellini screenplay”.

Mrika’s successes continued even at the “Hella Siegrist Wettbewerb” competition in Lucerne, where she was awarded with the “Special Mentioned Performance”.

She is currently working in a dual chamber music project, titled “DuoLitanei” with the portuguese cellist, Hugo Paiva.

Hana Arapi: Entrepreneur and Designer

Hana Arapi is from Prizren, but moved to the capital of Kosovo, Prishtina, to pursue her master studies in Graphic Design and operate a startup called “Amam Studio”, a creative animation studio.

Juggling two different engagements hasn’t been easy for her, especially in the last year. Hana had only 36 hours to prepare for opening up her last exhibit at the Prizren Hamam, while also starting up “Amam Studio”.

“Starting up a business has been a great challenge, but I have learned quite a lot, and I have had the chance to dedicate myself to many things that I have a huge interest in”.

Hana is also a founder of the “Videosinteza” an alternative education platform, which uses illustrations and animation to discuss various topics from science, technology and social sciences. The purpose of these videos is to engage, raise awareness and inform.

“The idea for creating Videosinteza came about from our desire to use design to have a positive social impact.”

Creating one episode for “Videosinteza” takes about 150-200 hours of work. With the “Videosinteza” project, her team is now part of the Innovation Centre Kosovo (ICK), where they are working to find alternative forms for making the product more accessible.

Hana hopes to contribute to breaking down barriers, injustices, stereotypes, sexism and violence that prevent women from achieving their potential through her initiatives and activities.

She is using entrepreneurship as a channel to step-by-step alleviate the barriers that women face and is highly inspired from her mother, who has built the strength in her over her lifetime to be able to face the challenges on the way.

Rita Zeqiri: Athlete

The 23 year old “iron-woman” from Prishtina has been swimming since she was nine years old. Ever since she was a child, she has been known for her athletic spirit.

“What makes sport difficult is the daily routine and discipline, more so than the competition. Suffering with years of constant physical and psychological tiredness is what sets apart the work of an athlete from that of others. It is the capacity to face constant stress that determines the length of your life as an athlete. In the beginning of my career, the most difficult work was that I didn’t have substantial knowledge of trainers and that we lacked basic necessities for pursuing this sport,” says Rita.

The first international medal she won was in 2009 in HercegNovi in Montenegro.

“Being a champion and a record-setter for Kosovo was very important, considering that based on those results, I also participated in the most important competitions in Europe for Kosovo at the European and World competitions, as well as in the Olympics in 2016.”

This year, Rita challenged herself by becoming part of the “IronMan” competition in France.

The IronMan triathlon is known to be one of the most challenging competitions, where you have to be prepared for swimming, cycling and running. She passed this challenge with much success and her experience as a swimmer helped her a lot and built the confidence she needed to join this competition.

“My day to day preparations for Iron man, mostly focused on cycling, as this was the most difficult discipline for me. Since the number of women that cycle is very small in Kosovo, considering that as soon as you start cycling on the street you are judged, and because there are no cycling paths on the streets. During IronMan, I struggled the most with cycling, because of the heavy winds, up to 40km/h – 25+miles/hour and the high terrain of up to 1300 meters/4000+ feet.”

Rita also works at “Step”, a Swimming Center, focusing on young swimmers. She is also training her little sister, Eda, who according to her is currently regarded as one of “the best swimmers in Kosovo” and preparing to represent Kosovo in the World Championship.

In the near future, Rita aims to successfully complete the Full Iron Man, which is the double in length from the competition in France, requiring 3.8 km of swimming, 180 km biking and 42 km running.

Era Skivjani and Yllka Haxhikadrija: Producers of “Pa përkufizim”

Yllka (24) and Era (17), two young women from Gjakova, have recently produced their first film “Pa perkufizim”, translated as “No Definition”, which is a reflection of the feelings of youth in the face of prejudice.

Even though, Yllka is studying architecture and Era Information and Computer Technology. They share a common hobby: film production. Through film they hope to be able to touch upon subjects that hurt the livelihoods of their communities.

“Prejudice is an inseparable part of our society. Some of us are judged because of the life choices we make that are against tradition, while others are judged because of their faith, race and gender. We judge situations which we are incapable of understanding, because of our intellectual limitations and our lack of sufficient information and thus create an unsound stance towards something or someone,” says Yllka.

The “Pa Perkufizim” film depicts what lies behind judgment. The main reason for creating this documentary came about from a desire to raise awareness and educate viewers about the concept of judgment in our society in more depth.

For the young women, producing this film was difficult because they had to write the script and direct the documentary themselves. They also struggled with finding people who would be part of the film.

“A struggle for me was to find people that would feel comfortable to share their histories of struggle. Many of the people that had the best stories and the strongest messages did not want to be part of the documentary or gave up at the last moment.” – says Era.

The total length of the project, from ideation to film completion, was six months. Dokufest, provided them in-kind support, offering consultations, cameras, and working space. Dokufest is an International Documentary and Short-Film Festival which is held in the idyllic old town of Prizren in Kosova.

Era’s and Yllka’s “Pa Perkufizim” film was screened at “Dokufest” in Prizren, as well as in Gjakova at the Parku kulturor “Ali Podrimja”, and in Romania, at the “Culese din Balcani” at the “Free Zone Festival”, in Belgrade at the “Pravo Ljudski” Festival in Sarajevo.

During the month of March of this year, the documentary was screened in Venice at the “Ca’Foscari” festival, where it was also awarded with the Special Mention of Passinetti award.

As a visual artist, Era is now focusing on mural creation, while Yllka has just produced another short-documentary, jointly with Mateja Raickovic and Biljana Dulovic, as part of the “Creative Documentary Film Lab”. The film is planned to premiere in August of 2019 at Dokufest and then it will be shown at Pravo Ljudski Film Festival in Sarajevo.

This publication has been produced with the assistance of the European Union. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of KosovaLive and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union or IKS, and Lens or FES.

Kosovalive uses media as a means of education, dialogue and equality. Since 2015, KosovaLive houses the GlobalGirl Media Kosova bureau, which has been awarded 9 honors and awards working in getting girls’ and young women’s voices heard through media.

GlobalGirl Media, a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization, is dedicated to empowering high school age girls from under-served communities around the world through media, leadership and journalistic training to have a voice in the global media universe and their own futures.

GlobalGirl Media invests in girls to become their own agents of change in bridging the gender digital divide, providing concrete skills with which to improve their personal situations. They believe working with young women around the world to find and share their authentic voice is an investment in our global future.

The ICTforWomanity interview series focuses this week on video production. To cover this area, we are meeting with Amie Williams, an award winning producer/director specializing in documentary film and video for television. Amie  is the Executive Director & Co-Founder of GlobalGirl Media (GGM), an organization that develops the voice and media literacy of teenage girls and young women, ages 14-22, in under-served communities, by teaching them to create and share digital journalism designed to improve scholastic achievement, ignite community activism and spark social change.

Servane Mouazan – Womanity: Amie, what should the world specifically know about GlobalGirl Media?

Amie Williams – GlobalGirl Media: By arming girls with cameras in low income urban areas, the invisible girl is transformed into an agent of visibility, with the power to disrupt the silence surrounding gender-based violence, reproductive rights, poverty, racism, sexism and many critical issues facing adolescent girls today.

SM: What is it that you are doing differently, compared to other citizen media innovations? 

AW: GGM harnesses the power of new digital media to empower young women to bring their often-overlooked perspectives onto the global media stage.

GGM offers an immersive, interactive educational curriculum, which features both soft and hard media skills, with a focus on entrepreneurship: our training prepares young women to be competitive in an increasingly challenging job market. We also connect girls across borders and boundaries, via Skype and social media. Since we are global, we encourage girls to think about citizen media as a global movement.

We give girls cameras and challenge them to take on the untold story, the one that matters, because it matters to them.

SM: What type of technology do you use at Global Girls Media and how does it make a difference?

AW: We focus on video production and blogging. Research has shown girls’ relationships, self-esteem and school performance are negatively impacted by the more time they spend online. Both traditional and social media is dumbing girls down, consistently negatively impacting their body image, sexuality, self-esteem and ability to succeed. When statistic after statistic tells us how under-represented women are in media, and when the male perspective dominates most of this media, it unconsciously reinforces the invisibility and silencing of women.

Global Girl Media has the solution: hand the tools of authoring this media over to girls. We give girls cameras and challenge them to take on the untold story, the one that matters, because it matters to them. We believe that by empowering girls to tell their own stories and teaching them that their lives matter, a systemic change begins to take form in family, school and community. Media plays such a central and powerful role in girls’ lives that being authors of that media is critical in helping them navigate a world seemingly daunting because the white, male perspective dominates it. What we are really doing is advocating for a girl-driven “global citizenship” where young women connect using new media and share their experience, strength and hope with each other from places that are under-reported, marginalized, stereotyped or silenced.

SM: What questions do people never ask you, you wished they did?

AW: It is this question:

“How is the work you are doing impacting the actual heart and soul of individual girls?”

As opposed to outward metrics like academic performance, numbers of girls trained and scalability of program, what about the individual journey each girl begins once they start our program? It is very difficult to gauge soft outcomes like the rise in a girl’s self-esteem or links to decisions made or feelings developed as a result of learning to tell one’s own story or focus on positive storytelling in negative environments.

A report by AWID (Association of Women in International Development) in 2010 questioned current M&E practices in its report, “Capturing Change in Women’s Realities”,” and discusses this need for more creative and thorough approaches to assessing the success of girls and women’s rights programs, and the inherent challenge in measuring social change within the gender context.

A quote from this report really helped me:

“When you work for women’s interests, it’s two steps forward – if you’re really smart and very lucky! – And at least one-step back. In fact, it’s often two or three steps back! And those steps back are, ironically, often evidence of your effectiveness; because they represent the threat you have posed to the power structure and its attempt to push you back. Sometimes, even your ‘success stories’ are nothing more than ways the power structure is trying to accommodate and contain the threat of more fundamental change by making small concessions.”

SM: What was an unexpected suggestion or commend by one your program participants that opened up new perspectives?

AW: Basically the one message (which comes in all sorts of ways) from our girl reporters is “don’t give up on this program, no matter how hard it is to keep it funded and keep it going… we need this!”

I get messages on Facebook, I hear it when during a training, a girl who had submitted her master’s thesis, that day told me: “I could not have gotten this far without GlobalGirl Media, it really turned my life around…” It’s thanks to moments like this that I realize just how powerful and far-reaching our program is.

SM: Can you share a story of success that your venture triggered?

AW: I would like to share two stories.

The first one is of Sthokozo Mabaso, a young HIV-positive woman from South Africa who left rural Transvaal with no money or hope, ended up as a housemaid for a cruel Aunt in Soweto, found out about our program, really excelled, and we invited her to cover the World AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C., where she was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, ABC News, blogged for Huffington Post, and returned to South Africa to a full scholarship at a private film school and is now working in the professional film industry, most recently on the Hollywood film MATRIX.

The other huge success story is one of our reporters, Rocio Ortega, graduate of our very first program in Los Angeles, born and raised in East L.A., first in family to attend university, who took our program and as a result got introduced and interested in political training for leadership. She not only won a full scholarship to Wellesley, but she was also selected as the National Spokesperson for the UN Program Girl Up! – the only girl of color- and introduced First Lady Michelle Obama at the last GirlUP! Convention. She also won the MTV/HALO award for teen leaders, which came with a $10K contribution to GGM and to her education. She wants to run for political office and be the youngest Latina to run for Governor of California.

SM: What was a pivotal moment in/around your programme?

AW: I think the groundswell of awareness around the overall gender imbalance in media, movies or news and recently in particular the EEOC investigations here in the U.S. as to gender discrimination in Hollywood. We have been at this five years, and in those five years I have seen a palpable shift in the awareness, but not so much the financial support behind the work to see tangible progress.

Lately I have really been inspired by our Moroccan group of GlobalGirls who took on the leadership of the entire organization themselves. They are now registered in Morocco as an association and are fully running the organization, training more girls, getting paid work as journalists and videographers, and growing their vision of how media should represent girls and women in Morocco!

Connect to GlobalGirl Media on line:

Web: www.globalgirlmedia.org

Facebook: www.facebook.com/globalgirlmedia

Twitter: @globalgirlmedia

Instagram: global_girl_media