Change Making Women

This week Mary Ann and Ziada talk to Majo (Marjorie Angella Athurra) of the Gejja Women's Foundation in Mpigi in Central Uganda. We hear about her own story, her work with women in her own community and how she is working to end shame and secrecy around menstruation

This week on Change Making Women we talk to Kelly Diels, a writer and marketing consultant whose approach is based upon the marketing strategies of movements and revolutionaries. We find out why she is so passionate about the Feminist Marketing School she recently launched, what it means to market as a feminist without selling out, how she defined and critiques the Female Empowerment Lifestyle Brand and how she thinks we can both market our work and stay true to our values.

This week, in one of our occasional rants, we talk about how we feel about hairdressers cutting off too much hair - and also what we think about institutions that try to do that! It's all about natural hair, and your right to choose how you wear it, freedom & equality and stuff like that.

Revisiting one of our favourite shows. In this episode Maria Magembe and Hellen Lawuo-Meena tell us about their business, Daughters of the Soil, a premium skincare brand of African Heritage with a social purpose. We talk about the inspiration they have taken from Maria’s Great Grandmother, putting Africa on the map in a positive way through the products they are creating, the challenges of starting the business, their tips for working with a friend and their dream to develop a platform that supports rural women in Africa.

Revisiting one of our favourite Shows. In this podcast we interviewed Lilly Oyare, the Director of Little Rock, an Inclusive Early Childhood Development Project in Kibera, Nairobi. She tells us about how she gave up her job to start this project to provide education to children from the informal settlement and how her vision has grown from the five children she originally wanted to help in 2003 to the hundreds, including many disabled children, whose lives have been changed since. Along the way she explains how she accidentally became a passionate advocate for inclusion, how she has been able to develop and expand the project and gives us her advice about getting your own change making project started as well.

This week we talk with Jennifer Lentfer, Director of Communications from Thousand Currents and the woman behind the blog how-matters.org about her and in particular the recent book she co-edited with Tanya Cothran, Smart Risks (and which can be found at www.smartrisks.org). It leads us into a fascinating conversation about how aid and development are viewed, why we should refocus our efforts on challenging power and inequality and how we can lead and facilitate in new ways to create the positive change which the world needs right now.

This week we talk to Janelle Hardy about the importance of our life stories, how getting in touch with how we feel in our bodies can help us transform our lives and the lessons she has learnt as an apprentice carpenter. Janelle teaches memoir-writing as transformational work and lives in Vancover Island, Canada.

This week we talk to Tanya Geisler, a coach and reluctant expert in the Imposter Complex about why you shouldn't let your own self-doubt stop you from making the difference you are passionate about making in the world. We talk some common signs of the Imposter Complex, why if you feel it you definitely aren't a fraud and concrete strategies for moving through your fears and getting on with the work you long to do.

This week Walker Thornton speaks with Mary Ann about her work as an educator, public speaker and author advocating for women’s sexuality and encouraging women to ‘step into their desire’. We talk midlife, women’s right to stay focused on their own wants and needs and why being in touch with our own sexuality is important and vital at every age.

This week we speak with Kimberly Weiss a Body Positive Health Coach about what it means to truly believe in the possibility of health at any size, why she is so angry about the public health obsession with obesity and why we each need to start with defining what health means for us and our own unique body.

In this episode of Change Making Women Ziada and Mary Ann talk about women in politics and to what extent we can expect women in positions of power to represent the needs of women.

This week we talk with Ronna Detrick about how writing, both for herself and for others has helped her to delve deep in to her true nature. We talk about how writing can help us to uncover more about our deep fears and desires and in doing so identify our power and potential as women. Ronna also tells us about the support she is now offering to other women who want support and witness with their own writing.

This week Mary Ann talks to Pamela Brannon, Executive Director of Children of Uganda. They speak about the experiences that inspired her to make a difference, the work of her organisation and their belief looking after ourselves is an important part of how we make a difference.

This week we talk to Sarah Lloyd-Hughes from Ginger Public Speaking about her passion for supporting women to use their voices to share a message that really makes a difference. We talk about what holds us back from speaking our truth, how we can use imperfection to our advantage and why she's committed to work with 100 leading women to support them to create change in the world.

This week Mary Ann gives Ziada an update on the changes that have been happening in her Jijaze project explaining what they are about and how you can get involved.

This week Mary Ann talks to Gwynn Raimondi, a an electrical engineer turned therapist about trauma and how we process it. Gwynn shares how she works not only with her clients own lived experiences of trauma but also both cultural and intergenerational trauma and we discuss why this kind of work is so closely connected to our desire for Social Justice.

On tonights’ podcast we talk with Elinor Predota about story telling, being a pagan and why listening matters so much when you want to both tell stories and work for social justice.

This week Ziada and Mary Ann reflect on Brexit in the UK and Ziada asks Mary Ann to share her views about the process and what the triggering of Article 50 this week will mean for the UK & beyond.

This week we talk with Shishani about her project Shishani & The Namibian Tales. We talk about making music, about her quest to discover the music of the San people in her homeland of Namibia, about authenticity, going you own way, love and power.

This week Ziada and Mary Ann talk to Eva Baguma, a Business Development Manager with the Uganda Women Entrepreneurs Association Limited. She tells us about her path towards her purpose, working in change making organisations, going with the flow and trusting her ‘big work’ will find her if she keeps on showing up.