How awards can help writers growth

Queen's Honours Awards

Reflecting on June's journey in my work of girls and women empowerment I humbly received the honour of a BEM award from the Queen's Honour birthday list, this prompted me to do a blog post to share the importance of accepting awards and why one should. Whilst working to support women and girls in the community is a vocation and not expectant of awards, there is also a joy of being celebrated and your work recognised. The Prime Minister officially acknowledges the panel's shortlisted candidates, after the government hands them over to the Queen who has the final approval. Why would one dismiss the awards under Order of the British Empire? Well, one reason Black Asian and Ethnic Minorities, BAME people do not accept these awards is because of the title being associated with empire? 

Why Race is a major component of failing school inclusion

 Women and Writers of Colour

Black Books - Non-Fiction

Last week my blog post was on inclusion failure as schools celebrated School Diversity Week, and this week gives further evidence on this matter. Not only are activists seeking to address the lack of black history in the school curriculum, but there are also findings that only 7% of women writers being studied at GCSE level English Literature, and a shocking 0.7% of writers of colour being included in the English Curriculum Key Stage 2- 4. The race equality think tank Runnymede Trust and Penguin Random House collaborated to investigate the lack of representation from ethnic minority authors and writers of colour. 

Why Inclusion is Failing?

 School Diversity Week

This week schools work on celebrating LGBT+ & Equality and Inclusion from 21st - 25th June. Last week I posted on Autism and Inclusion discussing why we need to celebrate our differences. But when the week is over, things return to normal, and only when the nation has campaigns do we remember to celebrate or create changes for excluded people. This is the same for Black History Month, a time when there is a possibility for black professionals to be invited into schools to give talks, and for our history to be shared in lessons. Things have improved recently with some schools taking time to collaborate with black-led organisations. The celebrations include the start of mandatory black history as The Black Curriculum since June 2020 campaigned for this to be actioned, and have trained over 3,300 teachers and 3,500 students reached to date. But why is inclusion failing?

National Storytelling Week

Celebrating Multicultural Stories

Amanda Epe at Rich Mix

The first of February marks National Storytelling Week, a great tool for building confidence and self-esteem. We are more familiar with storytelling as a vocal art, and then as the written art. Telling is to speak to the public, the receivers of the story being listeners, similarly, readers say of tales and literature "the story is telling us..." so we can agree that storytelling is telling stories through public speaking or writing.

The mission of storytellers are to spin a sequence of events from beginning to end with an underlying message, mission, and solution. We all love to tell narratives of our own, as "everyone has a story in them," alternatively sharing other people's stories and folktales are highly popular for storytellers. We cannot define storytelling in this correct way or that way, each culture has its own version of telling. Great vocal storytelling, however, uses other art forms to make the delivery more interesting and entertaining, such as gesture and movement, and writers "show and don't tell" with their words.

Fly Girls Victory 2017

History to Victory

The Fly Girls Running Community are a group of local women mostly from the London Borough of Brent who meet up for weekly runs, inspiring others as they set off every Sunday morning at 9am to run together at the national stadium, Wembley. Women of all ages and abilities assemble together in the municipal offices at the civic centre before they move off upstairs at the stadium for their warm up exercises. The run is for girls over 14 to senior women but particularly targeted at the older population and women from African, Caribbean and Asian heritages, who have higher rates of health inequalities.


We are a get me started run together group, and we started initially as 3 women back in the first Sunday of October 2016. By getting people started the group encourages people who are new to running and/or being active. New members feel welcome in this friendly group where members are non-competitive and the individual decides whether they wish to run or walk. Those who are new to running take it step by step, gradually going from walking to slow jogging up to 2km, 5km or beyond.

African Fashion Week London 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAxouoCZCFY&feature=youtu.be

Drop me a mail for further info

Celebrating Award and National Libraries Day 2016 - Home and Away

Completely Novel Celebrating Winning Authors

Free Launch Party

Winning Authors

Farringdon

Free Word Centre, Farringdon was the best place to be on Wednesday 3rd June where ten amazing winning authors were celebrated on one night. It was a completely novel way of a literary night with a free atmosphere, as the venue name suggests authors freed their words, the tickets and beverages were free for guests and press and it had an open space interior. What's more, unlike a literary night where authors read from their books or are interviewed and the audience sit and listen, sometimes feeling restricted, this one was different as authors moved and mingled within the standing audience freely. It was a combination of an uber-cool literary festival blended with the vibes of a popular music concert. As each author stepped to the stage spotlight, Completely Novel publishing team pulled the party poppers.

Literary Enthusiasts

FGM Education and Campaign Work

A Flying Start

Outspoken

"A Fly Girl" first released as an ebook end November 2014 had a flying start being in the best seller list from the first week, and a month later still a hit. In collaboration with Black and Outspoken this book went on a book blog tour, on an exciting international travel. Tundun Adeyemo professional and passionate, and her team were all extremely excited over the six weeks of the book tour. It travelled from the U.K to Nigeria and U.S.A being featured in top blogspots as well as national papers and magazines. In one particular publication the author interview created a grand buzz, going viral with over 500 social media shares. Needless to say it was overwhelming with the interest request for a debut author.

FGM Prevention and Prosecution

U.K Stamping Out FGM in the first prosecution

For 29 years Female Genital Mutilation FGM has been outlawed in Britain, and today marks the announcement of the first case of prosecutions to perpetrators of FGM crime; the charge signals the seriousness and should hinder and prevent anyone wishing to support FGM.

Guardian ANTI FGM Campaign

http://www.theguardian.com/society/video/2014/feb/26/guardian-fgm-petition-campaign-video

Warsan Shire's poem about FGM

http://www.theguardian.com/society/video/2014/feb/14/girls-warsan-shire-fgm-video?INTCMP=

The Cry, The Call of Dr Phoebe Abe and Leyla Hussein

End FGM not Female Fertility

Dr Phoebe Abe

This week the nation focuses on National Infertility, in Philappa Roxby’s (BBC health reporter) recent article infertility is regarded as a taboo subject for women. In a talk last Saturday by Dr Phoebe Abe a GP who also campaigns internationally against FGM, she talks poignantly on the unnecessary health conditions and major consequences of serious illness from the impact of FGM, such as Kidney failure. In Dr Abe’s work she informs her peers, surgeons in the medical profession as to the seriousness of FGM, many of whom are unaware of stitched women who are in labour and then proceed to Cesarean section. Outside of her surgery hours she passionately holds grassroots meetings with women to discuss the harm, the legal implications on those found guilty of the practice as well as political activism and lobbying.  

Miss Representation

Age Discrimination

Earlier on in the month I attended a screening hosted by UN Women,  KPMG Network of Women (KNOW) and the International Women’s Forum (IWF) from the award winning Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s film Miss Representation which highlighted the dire issues of inequality of women in USA. Key points that were alarming were girls and women with eating disorders, the limited amount of women that are protagonists in films, and few women directors or writers. What stood out for me were the remarks on women and ageing, exemplifying that woman at a certain age are marginalized and fade into the background, because of age discrimination.

United we stand

One world and one race is the binding factor to tie us together in one love, sharing and supporting each other in this life. Opposing views and values are divisive yet inevitable and healthy for democracy and freedom, however when we are working towards the same or similar goals there is a powerful force and greater impact when all participants pull together and work cohesively.

BBC Casualty

Unsilenced

For the first time ever the BBC drama Casualty tackled the issue of FGM to engage a wider audience in the U.K, to bring about awareness of the act and from a silencing-secrecy in communities that practice it to the public concern. The script emphasised the importance of safeguarding responsibilities of professionals who may come in face to case contact with affected girls, i.e. the surgeons at hospital; the hidden crime that should be reported to police in cases of suspecting. From the posts on BBC Casualty facebook page it is evident that this episode has been an eye opener for a lot of the British public, citizens were shocked to hear that this practice is going on in the U.K. Two commentators mentioned child abuse in a country of law and order. The story dealt with the physiology of FGM in childbirth complications as well as vulnerable children at risk of child abuse.

Signposting 2

Specialist Clinical Services for FGM, provided by NHS:

Safeguarding Children

Consultation Committee in view to incorporate FGM training in Initial Teacher Training (ITT) and Inset days.

Responsible department: Department for Education

Every child matters and it is vital that all teachers nationwide should be aware of any harmful practices and danger children face regardless of their culture.
The primary national curriculum for PSHE and Citizenship four elements, one stating developing a healthy, safer lifestyle for children.
With 30,000 girls at risk of being tortured the time is now to improve the skills and confidence of SRE teachers, through their ITT and regularly on INSET.
The time is now to review the curriculum and add this topic starting from year six. Please sign the petitions below:

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/47004

Signposting

Advocacy Services and Support