My creed; My pulse..

First, we as women face diverse struggles and challenges. We strive to make our lives better, overcome these challenges and make our dreams come true. Reading Gail's articles opened my eyes and my heart more to these challenges we all face and in turn made me appreciate more this change we are all working towards. I reflected and thought to myself how many peolpe would have read the articles and been equally enlightened and inspired and that made me much more determined to be a Voice of the Future correspondent.

I identified myself in a couple of her points. For me, one of my challenges has been embracing myself as a woman who has been given unique innate abilities to make a difference through words. It took me a while and need i say im still learning to accept this gift and employ it/use it judiciously thus one of the reasons i applied to be a Voice of the Future correspondent. I reasoned that in applying, i would have the opportunity, first, to meet with amazing women from around the world in a singular platform from whom i could learn a whole lot and perhaps be able to inspire too from my personal stories and writings.

Another reason i applied was to be able to get professional mentoring on this path of being a citizen journalist as i know that one of the most veritable ways of putting an issue out there especially if it is going to cover and gain more grounds is to put it in writing in the appropriate forum and thankfully i found worldpulse.

Lastly, i applied to be a Voice of the Future correspondent because i would like to contribute my quota having learnt and benefitted from like minds to championing our unique cause ie making our voices heard, inspiring others to do same and generally making the lot of women all over the world better which in turn would better the lot of children all over.

Here in my country Nigeria, women are still under-represented in politics, (good example is our recently concluded general elections) women still suffer 'in silence' acts of domestic violence and just recently a man beat up his wife to death before some suffering the same fate took the appropriate actions, women still die howbeit 'unecessarily' on hospital beds whilst giving birth as a result of poor health infrastructure, women are still being discrimanted against at the work place... and the list goes on. If i cant go out there in the forefront all alone to combat all these, i can employ my pen to sensitise and bring these issues to world attention.

My life's vision is to make a difference, inspire at least 'one' person to want to live better, to set in motion a spiral effect of deeds and words which would outlive me and go on inspiring. To put a smile on a face, courage in a heart, set an example for a life. I hope to do these and even much more and with worldpulse and the voice of the future program, i am well on my way.