Women empowerment is a rarely discussed issue in our affluent city, Hong Kong. So,
engaging in this sensitive topic in a developing country, Sri Lanka, was a big challenge
to me. I worked in two NGOs in Sri Lanka, Sarvodaya and YWCA. Instead of working
in office during my stay, I was given opportunities to get in touch with the targeted
groups, e.g the elderly, workers in cap factory, malnutrition kids and self-employed
women. Since most Sri Lankans do not speak English, language is one of the barriers
to understand the service targets. For example, we visited the women elderly home
with the majority speaking in Sinhala or Tamil only. We needed translations sentence
by sentence from the local AIESECers. There is a traditional practice in Sri Lanka to
show respects to the elderly. We worshiped the women elderly by kneeling down with
fingers crossed, followed by hugging and kissing two cheeks. When I saw their watery
eyes, I could imagine how much they miss their children who were lost in the 25-year
internal war or 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
During the last week of my stay, YWCA organized an event called ‘Girls in Wheels’,
which advocates increasing the number of women political leaders in parliament. It
was my honor to take part in this meaningful campaign, to strive for women rights in
patriarchal society and to impact people from the other part of the world. 50 women of
a variety of nationalities cycled around Colombo and distributed over 1000 leaflets
about this campaign. I was somewhat surprised by how the community valued this
event since our ‘motorcade’ was escorted by police and appeared on the local TV
news.
Travelling is definitely one of the interesting parts during my stay, but enlightening one’s
life is my ultimate aspiration in Sri Lanka!
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