We are delighted to share a blog written by Duru Tasci, a student at TED Atakent School in Turkey, who is part of a team delivering a Global Goals project for the 2018-19 Global Goals Competition.
Their project ‘Act Like A Human’ is among over 620 social action projects currently running as part of the GSL movement and we are excited to be supporting them to design and lead positive social change in their community and help to achieve the United Nations Global Goal 5; Gender Equality for all women and girls.
Our project aim is to eliminate inequality and break gender stereotypes encouraging all people to ACT LIKE A HUMAN! I recommend to other people my age to get involved in Global Social Leaders because it increases your self esteem and makes you feel proud about yourself and for your teammates. My call to action was seeing an issue in my society and being able to relate it especially about myself.
Our project aims are to bring attention to gender inequality and a create an awareness about the importance of gender equality in our community. We are living in a society which can be defined as sexist and therefore understand the impact of gender inequality and what it feels like.
We have organized a number of events, for example a PURPLE DAY where everyone wears purple to demonstrate support for gender equality and we and speak to the public to see their point of view for gender equality and inequality. Also we have a plan to count how many sexist words or phrases are used whilst texting and talking.
We want to raise awareness about gender equality but not in just one way so that local people understand women do not have to stay in the home as the primary childcarer or cleaner, they too can contribute and men do not have to be the primary breadwinner all the time.
I got involved in the first place because I always think about inequality in society and the reasons behind them. As a teenage girl these I especially feel these inequality lie around gender and I find myself getting annoyed and upset by this. My view is that every person is born as a ‘human’, we don’t chose to be born into a specific gender or family. It cannot be a persons fault if they are born female or male, they cannot be expected to stand trial or live out social norms because of their gender.
Through this project I hope I will develop an ability to defend myself and my society from gender inequality. I think we have to learn do not judge or make somebody feel bad or shamed because of their gender and we have to learn we are human, we can have some differences because of our nature but we cannot have inequalities.
The challenge ahead of me will be changing the minds of people that hold sexist beliefs and dealing with negative criticism from them. I hope I will feel more equipped myself to succeed in the future after completing my project because I will have learned how to to respond to a prejudiced society and it’s sexist stereotypes.
The 2018-19 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2019. If you belong to one of the 700+ teams of students currently delivering a social action project as part of the competition we would love to hear from you and feature your blog and project photos on our website to inspire others.
Click here to submit a blog.
