Wagatwe Wanjuki
What actions are you taking to promote and protect the health and rights of women and young people worldwide?
I joined the Board of Directors of Students Active for Ending Rape (SAFER) last year as the Student Outreach Coordinator. Students Active For Ending Rape is a nonprofit organization that helps college students change how their universities prevent and respond to sexual violence. The Department of Justice says that between 20-25% of all college women will be raped or survive attempted rape before they graduate or leave school. Unfortunately, many schools have shown more concern for protecting their reputations than making comprehensive prevention programs, helping survivors, and punishing perpetrators. Working for SAFER plays a part protecting and helping women and young people for many years to come.
I also this month got the amazing opportunity to intern at the Third Wave Foundation in External Relations. Third Wave is such an amazing foundation which provides funding for innovative projects and organizations that help female and transgender youth and youth of colour. I am helping Third Wave continue its mission of empowering and building the youth of the world to work towards social justice. The Reproductive Justice Network brings together organizations to bring awareness to the barriers to secondary marginalized groups (young parents, sex works, youth of colour) to get the reproductive health care and comprehensive sex education that they need. As a member of the External Relations Department, I serve as a part of the foundation’s direct contact with the people they help and the other organizations that work with Third Wave with similar missions.
What is your vision of lasting change for yourself and for the world's young people?
My vision for the world’s young people would entail a world where people would work together to eliminate the vast inequalities that affect marginalized groups. An increasing number of people would acknowledge that many are unfairly not able to access the education, health care, and living conditions that they deserve. And in efforts to eliminate these inequalities, youth would be recognized as an integral part to implementing this change and lead the movement to create (and maintain) a just world.
If you could tell world leaders one thing, what would it be?
I would tell them that we need to concentrate on and actively work to improve the living conditions of those in underdevelopped nations. We need to empower them and give them the resources needed to make broad, lasting change and make sure that WOMEN and YOUTH play a large part in building their communities. For when we work to eliminate poverty, discrimination, and inequality in those countries, we do not only improve those areas, but also the world.
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I have known Ms. Wanjuki for a while, and have to say that this is a hard working young woman with a passion and commitment for helping others. Her sense of injustice is matched with a sense of humor that is rare and inspiring. She has the work ethic needed to get things done, and though she denies it, she is also a bit of a glamor queen.
I am proud to be Twe's fellow board member at SAFER!
She has such integrity and a commitment to social justice. This movement is bolstered by her efforts!
If you really knew her, you'd know that it is actually her abuser who was ill spirited, resentful, and a liar. I do not agree with you spreading lies about a strong, brave survivor who have overcome people trying to constantly put her down and improve the lives of others.
Honestly, it seems clear that you simply don't know Ms. Wanjuki at all so your comments have no sense of legitimacy. The legal circumstances you reference with little to no basis seem to be a product of a skewed system that her work actively tries to address and improve. Even if you have some sort of personal grudge against Ms. Wanjuki, it would seem callous and malicious to simply disregard her positive body of work and attempt to downplay her conviction in regards to female rights, equality and safety. Perhaps you need to familiarize yourself with her work before you attack and attempt to discredit because as of now your in the shameful position of seemingly defending sexual assault and violence against women as being ok and the notion that grammar is more important than the issues at hand.
Wagatwe is not a liar, nor is she ill-spirited or resentful. She is a survivor of rape and abuse who has courageously stood up for herself and demanded justice. Her abuser and rapist was able to use rape culture and an incredibly flawed, ineffective university judiciary system in order to terrorize and manipulate Twe, and likewise avoid being held responsible for his actions.
By creating this blog, Twe is providing victims and survivors with essential information which is often difficult to find (or even non-existent) within college/university resources. She is working extremely hard to expose the ways in which colleges and universities ignore victims and protect perpetrators. Based on her work experience at SAFER and Third Wave, it's clear that she's dedicated to ending sexual violence, namely that on college campuses, and by insulting her and trolling on this website, you are not only being disrespectful to Twe, her friends, her coworkers, and her supporters, but you are also spitting in the faces of all survivors.
It is blatantly obvious that you are missing the bigger picture of what is trying to be accomplished here. Coming on here to attack someone (even commenting on something as minute as grammer) while they are trying to help others is tasteless and shows lack of character on your part. All your childish comment has accomplished is to prove that it should be disregarded.
Your opinion is wrong, Cam
"Like it or not, it's the truth."
I think it's more of an opinion to which 169 other people disagree with.
But I digress…you're entitled to think what you want.
I wonder if someone could just vote for themselves on these things…I'd be voting for myself a million times. Or…170 times.
Actually, calling her a liar isn't the truth. Implying that multiple commenters might be the same person is obviously an attempt to discredit people who've called you out. Attacking Twe and claiming that her work isn't really work (by using quotation marks), or that her work is meaningless because you don't like her, are inappropriate actions to engage in. Clearly, you're out of the loop when it comes to the realities of sexual assault on campus, including Tufts' campus.
What Twe stands for is justice for victims and survivors, and accountability for college administrations. It's not that hard to see.
It doesn't let you vote multiple times, no. There's a button you can click to vote that disappears after you do so.
You can totally vote for yourself – and as many other people as you want. But you can only vote for each person once.
Hey all — I'm the program officer for online communications and campaigns at IWHC, which means that community management of Akimbo and Young Visionaries falls under my domain. I just deleted several abusive comments aimed at Wagatwe.
Here is our comment policy:
"We aim to create a blog that fosters open discussion about the health and rights of women and girls throughout the world, and welcome comments that both support and challenge our work and perspectives. Thoughtful and respectful comments are welcome, while hate speech, personal attacks, offensive language, or off-topic comments to other sites will be deleted.
Comments are moderated by the communications team, though at the moment comments are not held for approval, they are posted when submitted. If we begin to have a problem with abusive or hate-speech comments we will switch to fully moderated comments and a blog administrator will have to approve all comments before they appear on the blog. We retain the right to moderate, edit, delete, and block comments as we see fit."
I am happy to discuss any issues people have with this policy or my choices in enacting it. You can respond here or email me at aray [at] iwhc.org if you like. The abusive comments have not been completely deleted – they are unpublished, and I am tracking the URLs of commenters on this and all other posts.
I think the fact that there are apparently all these people saying negative things just demonstrates more why Twe so deserves this grant. She has been incredibly strong and persevered throughout an unbelievable amount of opposition. She is absolutely committed to her projects, and is dedicated, hardworking enough to make a real change.
Nice try.
Twe is one one of the most promising, fearless, badass young women I have ever met. Beyond committed to her work, there are amazing things coming from this girl and I can think of no one I would rather support.
Twe has suffered through much and, as the comments that were deleted clearly show, has faced adversity in so many forms. Despite this, she still puts her best foot forward and is working hard to benefit other women in her generation, and those in future generations. No matter how many negative comments or actions are directed towards her, she perseveres and is making a positive difference. She certainly has been a source of inspiration for me, and I really hope that she receives the grant because I can't think of anyone who deserves it more, or who would be more dedicated to making sure the money is spent wisely and for a wonderful cause.
I started voting for random people cuz twe was beating them so badly