I have been part of a long term capacity building project to develop women leaders among the Orang Asli community (Indigenous People) organized by Empower (Persatuan Kesedaran Komuniti Selangor). The communities we have been working with come specifically from Peninsular Malaysia. At the beginning we started out with a basic focus group discussion in 2014 with 13 women, to find out what the burning issues were.
Tijah Yok Chopil
This brings me to an amazing activist who has really challenged the stereotype of Orang Asli women, Tijah Yok Chopil. She commands great respect for her ceaseless work challenging land grabbing of customary lands and confronting the state for human rights violations. Her journey has been long and of late, she shares of having lost long time comrades to the struggle.
Tijah was instrumental in bringing together this group of women who became our initial trainees under this program. It was a purely capacity building workshop to increase women's leadership and develop a cadre of potential women leaders in the movement. We successfully trained more than 52 women on leadership, women's human rights, community organizing and methods of analysis.
As part of consolidating the knowledge that they gained through the program, participants were trained to tell digital stories and create advocacy videos to raise public awareness. The video was created by the women themselves with some editing expertise from Empower.
We were able to support women like Fatimah from Mengkapoh, Murni from Negeri Sembilan and Elvira from Kampung Tekir to raise the issues to a wider audience. Fatimah once addressed a regional conference on women, highlight the plight of her community.
These women have a plethora of experience and ceaseless courage to speak truth to power.
Tijah Yok Chopil
Tijah was instrumental in bringing together this group of women who became our initial trainees under this program. It was a purely capacity building workshop to increase women's leadership and develop a cadre of potential women leaders in the movement. We successfully trained more than 52 women on leadership, women's human rights, community organizing and methods of analysis.
As part of consolidating the knowledge that they gained through the program, participants were trained to tell digital stories and create advocacy videos to raise public awareness. The video was created by the women themselves with some editing expertise from Empower.
We were able to support women like Fatimah from Mengkapoh, Murni from Negeri Sembilan and Elvira from Kampung Tekir to raise the issues to a wider audience. Fatimah once addressed a regional conference on women, highlight the plight of her community.
These women have a plethora of experience and ceaseless courage to speak truth to power.
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