By: Naransuvd Bazarsad
Edited by: Ahmed Labib Daiyan
Did you know there is a women empowerment project at APU that is dedicated to providing a safe and inclusive space for female students? In a society where gender inequality is still a prominent issue, women empowerment is an essential factor for change. HERVoice, a Project B organization which began last November, aims to provide an environment at APU where female students can empower, grow and collaborate with each other.
Who is behind this project?
Second-year student Alyssa Rosvita, and third-year students, Aisle Belmonte and Kanya Mumtaz are the students behind this initiative. They started the project to provide a safe space for women who lack the outlet to connect with other women to share their worries and struggles in their daily lives. They believed that fostering women empowerment should be practiced all around the world, but APU was a good place to start. Moreover, they wanted to make APU a better place for its students, especially for current and future female students.
“We have personally experienced being misunderstood or looked down on as a woman countless times. However, we have also had multiple experiences of sharing our worries and sorrows with fellow women”, said Alyssa. “The sense of security and comfort that we've found made us realize that not every woman has the privilege that we do—to be able to lean on others and share our story.”
How will HERVoice foster women empowerment at APU?
HERVoice plans to promote and achieve its goals as a Project B organization through 4 different programs, HERNetwork, HEREvent, HERSupport and HERInsight. Each has its own unique activities to raise awareness for women’s issues and unite female students together at APU.
In HERNetwork, female students can gather and talk about different topics regarding their struggles and issues every month either through Zoom or the community Discord server. HEREvents, as you can guess from the name, are events held to raise awareness about social issues regarding women, and essentially raise money to use for HERSupport. To support women’s communities outside of APU, they set up HERSupport, a program where they can help girls in vulnerable situations by fundraising. The donation goes to World Vision International’s 1000 girls program to support girls in developing countries. And lastly, HERInsight is a mentorship program where alumni and industry professionals host webinars and workshops in the context of raising awareness of women’s struggles, health and education.
Last month, they held their first HERNetwork event through zoom, as an introductory event for students and also discussed how female students deal with their struggles, like mental health, body image, and self-doubt. The participants were able to have a meaningful discussion and freely share their opinions about their different experiences. “It was really touching to see female students being vulnerable with a group of people they've never met before, but we came together with the same understanding.” said Kanya.
HERVoice will be holding HERNetwork monthly with even more illuminating discussions each time. They also plan to debut their other programs soon and encourage everyone to join in. “HEREvent will be nothing but fun, with activities such as yoga, 5K run, and much more.”, mentioned Kanya.
Although HERVoice’s activities originally intended to attract female students, they also realized that the involvement of male students in the initiative was also vital to their goal.
“Along the way, we decided that it is just as important to bring male students into the mix. This is not only for us to educate them on women's struggles, but also to have them as allies, since we found that many male APU students that share the same interest in women empowerment as we do.”, said Aisle.
HERVoice is still a fairly new project and has many more milestones to achieve before being able to foster a better environment for female students at APU. We hope that more students can join and become allies to this initiative and help HERVoice to attain its goals. “It would be great to see APU being recognized as one of the empowering universities for women in Japan”, mentioned Aisle.
Links:
HERVoice instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hervoice.apu/
HERVoice website: https://hervoiceapu.wixsite.com/hervoice