A new wave of women running online campaigns

If utilised positively, social media can change peoples’ lives in some ways. Ask some people who use social media for marketing and advertising their business and they will tell you how powerful they are in reaching many people.

Not only that but also social medial have helped people to promote campaign so as to support and raise awareness among the society on various issues, for example promoting women’s right and children’s rights among others.

In recent years, most women have been fully exploring the social media by launching campaigns aiming at raising people’s awareness. If it is all about women’s rights, it is very likely that such online campaigns will include issues like gender-based violence, forced and early marriages, domestic violence, both physical and mental – and other forms of abuse.

Lorna Dadi, who is one among women who run online campaigns to educate and raise awareness, says social media has helped her in reaching out hundreds of thousands of girls and women.

“I have developed a passion in working with children and youth, who are socially marginalised and social media have been so helpful in reaching out the targeted group,” says Lorna.

She is involved in shelter sharing project, a fund raising campaign for provision of shelter to about 100 children/youth at different orphanages.

After she succeeded with that project, Lorna, the mother of two, came up with ‘NISITIRI’ Campaign. The campaign aims at not only offering re-usable sanitary pads to adolescent girls but also providing menstrual hygiene education and adolescence management skills to the girls.

Lorna understands that being a girl comes along with a number of vulnerabilities. The adolescence phase of life also brings with it more challenges to a girl hence become more vulnerable if not properly addressed.

“This is a period where any human begin to establish his/her sense of identity. Establishing a sense of identity is the central task of one’s adolescence. This is the first time when, one will have the self-understanding capacity to cautiously sort through who she/he is and what makes this person unique. Your identity refers to more than just how you see yourself right now, it also includes what has been termed as “possible-self”; meaning, what it was thought you might become and who you would like to become,” she explains.

She adds that during menstruation period days the girl a number of challenges such as controlling the visible leakage of menstrual fluid presents practical and psychological challenges.

“If the visible leakage is not well managed the girls undergo embarrassments; that is practical and emotional difficulties that many girls face in managing their menses and hiding their menstruating status. She fear of fluid leaking and visibly staining girls’ clothes – fear of being teased by fellow teenage especially boys – erodes a girls’ confidence. In such condition a girl cannot feel comfortable doing anything away from her home, going to school being one of them. They also experience menstrual cramps and dysmenorrhea,” says Lorna.

According to her, most adolescent girls do not know what to do during their puberty.

Lorna says through that campaign, they have succeeded. It was three months campaigns and they have succeeded by 54 per cent. “The campaign ended on 15 of this month but encourage other people to support this campaign so us to help more girls out there. Through we the campaign girls from three villages of Matelefu, Igombavanu and Mapogolo in Mufindi District in Iringa Region will benefit,” she adds.

Lorna says she will continue use the earnings from the book to supports vulnerable children and youth according to the time and needs.

Being the Lymph nodes cancer survivor Jema Baruani 32, also came up Jema Foundation. Jema says after discovering that she had Lymph Nodes cancer called Hodgkin lymphoma, she was worried and cried so much.

She was worried that her life would end soon. She was hurting leaving her daughter who was still very young, let alone the husband.

“I thought much how my family could be. How my husband could raise children single handedly. I could not see the light in the tunnel, thanks to guidance and counseling which had since helped me overcome the trauma,” she says adding that guidance and counseling had helped her to gain hope and realize that God has plans for his every creature.

After she completed last chemotherapy, Jema decided to start the Jema Foundation.

According to her, it was a fundraising project with the aim of raising money to provide cancer patients with basic needs at Ocean Road Cancer Institute and Muhimbili Cancer Institute for Children.

In order to support the cause towards creating awareness and providing better treatment of hooking fresh bid to create awareness among cancer survivors, Jema embarked on T-Shirt printing project. The T-shirts were emblazoned with the message on how cancer patients can live with hope.

I got the support from the Coca Cola Company, which had since enabled me to give 25,000 pens and other learning materials for schoolchildren suffering from cancer.

In her Instagram page, Jema had written: “I hope and pray that you will be on my part and together we can make positive impact.”

Most of the failure she faces was lack of awareness as most people don’t know what was Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“People are unaware of the symptoms of cancer, they tend to ignore their body. Hence by the time they get diagnosis it is too late for them. However the more we advocate about the diseases the more the success on prevention ways, earlier detection and hence finding the cure for cancer disease,” she adds

Jema says if she would do the project all over again, she wouldn’t do differently but she will focus more on the part of getting sponsorship from different corporate companies, so that she could get funds to spread the campaign to all Tanzanians especially in the rural areas. “In rural areas most people are ignorant of cancer. They need to know about cancer. We also need to raise the awareness and give hope to the sick ones not to give up on life. They should know that if you are on cancer treatment either chemotherapy or radiation... you need to finish that line of treatment instead of jumping into the other forms of traditional medicines,” adds Jema.

Another woman educates, creates awareness and pray for women to succeed in their lives through social media, she is Catherine Peter Sesse 37.

Catherine is a born again facilitator of God’s word based on women and prayers, also a Founder of interdenominational network of praying women from Tanzania and Kenya known as Power in Prayers Network.

She had the privilege of living in Germany and when she joined the Giessen City college where she took courses for international language studies. While at the college she acquired self esteem which prompted her to become what she is today.

Being the Chief Executive Officer and founder of Power in Prayers Network (PPN) for five years, she manages to run a ‘Binti Jitambue’ Campaign under Power in Prayer Network.

According to Catherine, ‘Binti Jitambue’ Campaign came up after realizing that “most of young girls don’t know who they really are, they don’t know that their worth as women”.

Providing knowledge/education to women and girls, Catherine wants to educate women about relevance/role of prayer in their lives and realize their value, know their position religiously, educate the girl child to understand their value and be God fearing and above all educating and helping them about entrepreneurship in order to be able to make and become economically stand on their own.

Based in Mwanza, Catherine uses her campaign to remind women about their purpose so that they can go through a proper channel to attain desired results in life and become good mothers.

“The education we offer enables them to stand on their own and make right decisions as it is known that most of girls and women can be easily gullible and cheated into destroying the foundation of their own future. As we all know, the foundation of every human being is built at a young age thus if their foundation is destroyed it became difficult for them to achieve their goals in their lives,” she says.

According to her, the campaign’s main aim is to educate young girls so that they know who they are.

“We teach them the word of God which enables them to realise their worth and take care, love and respect themselves, so as to become a person who can make good decision about their lives, protect their bodies and faith while pursuing their dreams and goals in life in fulfilling the purpose that God has for them,” says Catherine, who runs her online campaigns on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp groups, inviting all girls and women all over the world to join the drive.

For her part, Carol Ndosi says her online campaign, which goes by the name of “Leave No One Behind”, says her new campaign aims at helping teen mothers to accomplish their dreams.

Carol wants to help many young girls to realise their dream, making the world a better place to be. “We want to build a Vocational Residential Academy for teenage mothers in Tanzania who are banned from re-entry in schools. Specifically targeting those who were sexually assaulted and forced into early marriages,” she explains.

Statistics are shock as 21 per cent of girls between 15 and 19 years old do not finish school due to pregnancy.

“We need to do something for the girl child, whom most of them have been abused, abandoned, forgotten and now banned from re-entry in school,” says Carol, adding that through the campaign, she managed to collect Sh136,500 out of the targeted Sh100m for the construction of the vocational academy.