Name: Oni Thornell
Social Justice Group: Women and Education
Date of Fieldwork: January 25, 2018
Name of Organization: Girls Rising
Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: Lauren Manning
Type of Fieldwork: Interview
What I did:
For this fieldwork, we went to the Girl Rising headquarters and interviewed Lauren Manning. We also began to learn more about the process of producing the movie Girl Rising.
What I learned:
While visiting I learned a lot about the process of contacting and communicating with these girls family. Lauren explained that there are many obstacles that stop them from getting an education. Some of those things are relegion, work, and/or money issues.
What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:
She told us that when trying to help young girls you may run into religious rules that prevent the girl from participating. When that happens all you can really do is hope and try and convince the family that what you are doing is for a good cause. If you were to try and force this on them you might make the situation worse. Lauren really talked about the fact that many girls around the world really strugglew with the problem of education and its not just “someone else’s problem”. One of the amazing reactions to the girl rising movie was that when Lauren once visited a tribe in Northern Nigeria she realized that girls, in his family and many others, weren’t allowed to be educated because the community leader believed they would talk back and be disrespectful. Lauren showed him two stories, one of them was from a local girl who was educated and the other was from another girl from another country. These stories were both from he film Girl Rising. When it showed that they were educated but were still repectful to others he began to understand. He eventually changed his ways and found that Lauren was right and that it only benifitted the community to have women educated. This was something that I found extremely powerful to hear. If this film hadn’t been created those girls and women wouldn’t have been allowed to go to school. This interview was an amazing experience and I think it really helped us with our Teach-in.
