I am Daphnée Charles, a first time participant in the learner’s voice program of WISE. I am from Port au Prince, Haiti. I just finished three months ago courses for an agro-economics Bachelor degree for which I am writing now a final thesis in Montpellier, France. I went to school in Haiti and actually spent my lifetime there except when, after the January 12th earthquake in Haiti, Dartmouth College, an Ivy League school in the US, invited me as an exchange student, I enjoy that time in Hanover, New Hampshire. I have heard from my parents since my childhood that education was a gold precious key that could open doors and doors. I took this into account and gave to school a favorite place all my life. That was not without success. I got opportunities to learn so many things and my life so far is a success. I believe that education should be accessible to everyone no matter what. That’s the reason why I am actively supporting a non- profit organization called HELP that has distinguished itself by promoting higher education in my country. HELP provides full scholarships to straight B secondary needy students to enter Universities in Haiti. Every year, I take pleasure to go countrywide to specially recruit and encourage young women like me to work hard to beat their odds by entering College to get their diploma. I am an open minded person, friendly and respectful. I like spicy foods, reading and swimming.

I’m Mohammed Al-Jaberi, a young Yemeni person who happened to be luckier than millions of others from the same country. I have had the honor to meet too many people from all around the world with different backgrounds, languages and identities. I finished my secondary school in Yemen. However, I spent one of my secondary school years in the United States as an exchange student. I lived in many multi-religious backgrounds; historically, I come from a part of Yemen where Yemenite Jews lived, I’m a Muslim and I lived with a conservative Christian family for a year. All of these opportunities have participated somehow in forming a liberal and tolerant person who believes in diversity, culture dialogs and internationalism. My beginnings as an activist were three years ago when I started volunteering in various activities to help my community in different fields concentrating on youth empowerment, feminism and children education. I did six months internship as a program assistant for an educational program called English Micro-scholarship program ACCESS in AMIDEAST – Yemen.  I love to listen to classical music especially for Beethoven and Mozart. I like reading oriental novels and books that were written by Eastern authors who live in the west; they just have an amazing flavor of seeing the world from two different cultural views. I’m moving to Paris in a matter of days to start my undergraduate degree in engineering.

As it clearly appears Daphnée and I have some specific similarities. This has probably brought us to pair up for WISE this year. We are both excited about meeting soon in Doha and we hope to fully enjoy this great initiative and share as much as we can through our blog posts.

Gender Equality in the Yemeni Future

People all around the world use different approaches, tools and resources to modify their countries. Some tend to work on various issues which take a very long time to be solved, while others work only on specific ones that have a very limited time frame. They all share a common goal which is called positive change. I personally prefer to call it progress or development. For instance, Yemen is one of the countries which are really in need for development in different aspects. The current Yemeni situation is like a spider web created by issues that share several points of intersection. It’s very problematical and complicated. The issue that really fascinates me and I want it to be solved in the future is regarding women rights and their position in society.

Yemeni women have been facing very difficult obstacles and challenges that limit their lives and block their dreams. The Yemeni society is full of early marriage, lack of education, violence and professional discrimination against women. These problems are likely resulted by the traditions and customs especially in the rural areas where people are not educated and interpret the Islamic religion using cultural backgrounds and very limited mentalities. These issues affect the development directly and indirectly and keep the country under the category of the third world countries. “Yemen is like a man with a disability. He has only one leg which is the man and lacks the other which is the woman” – said a Yemeni women rights activist describing the current Yemeni situation.

As a male feminist, I believe in complete political, social, and economic equality between women and men which empower them to play an equivalent and effective role in creating a better country and implementing equal rights in society. I dream to see my country in the future with limitation of the age of marriage; above 18 years old, encouraging families and societies to allow their daughters to finish their higher education, creating equal professional opportunities for women and men, and making laws that ensure women rights against any kind of violence, and sexual harassment in public or private locations. In the present, there are very active society members who fight the cultural background against women and the rusty mentalities, in order to initiate change and build a better future. They organize workshops, forums or use social media to reach different levels in society from both genders.

Feminism is a solution for one of Yemen’s problems, there are many other problems that the society forbids the public to think, talk about or discuss them. The priority of each issue is different from one person to another. Some might say education, others might say health care and others might also say the unification. Personally, I believe one of the main factors for this world to be successful is our mothers, whom the prophet Mohammed mentioned that heaven is under their feet. Therefore, by drawing public attention to inequality between women and men and to the structures within society will help creating a dynamic and equal future for Yemen by both genders.

Words

Under different ideas and thoughts, I decided to start this blog; bravely giving my opinions about actions and events that occurs in my life. As a citizen of a country in the third world, I had the chance to live and experience

very different situations.

I have some libral points of view that a lot of the Yemeni people might disagree with me about. However, I'll try hardly to share them in this blog. I hope that I can keep writing