Sorry this Monday Muse is going up a little late today! I got carried away over the weekend :-) For more information about Monday Muse, click here.
I first heard the name Zainab Salbi during my TED month (during which I watched at least one TED video every day), when I watched this video:
If you haven’t seen this, trust me when I say it’s worth the 18 minutes.
“You can not actually talk about the stability of the whole society without having the stability of women.”
Salbi is an incredibly inspiring and brave woman. She’s the founder of Women For Women International, which helps women stand on their feet and be the agents of their own change, and a vocal women’s right activist. Women For Women helps or sponsors over 53,000 women every day. There are about 29 ongoing wars right now. Women For Women is in 8 of those areas and the only thing limiting their expansion is financial capacity.
Her main message is that women should have an equal say in their society. Which seems like a kind of “no duh” statement to those of us living in the US, but for millions of people around the world, this is still something vehemently denied. In a world where a woman can get thrown in jail for being forcibly raped by her cousin’s husband, we need a hundred, a thousand, a million more women like Zainab Salbi to stand up for our sisters around the world.
Her book, The Other Side of War, is a collection of stories and photographs that will absolutely shred your heart. And I mean into a gazillion tetrajillion pieces.
Here’s another video of Zainab Salbi talking about Women for Women International:
Salbi is my Monday Muse this week because I cannot listen to her talk or read about her without wanting to do more more more with my life. I can’t think about her without wondering what kind of difference I could make if I just committed.
I love the idea of watching a TED talk a day. I’m spread pretty thin now, but maybe I can make a point of watching one every non-school-night.