BRANDON – The world seen through women’s eyes is the chosen topic of a television project that will be produced with assistance from the Federated Women’s Institutes of Canada.
Arvel Gray, a host on the Women’s Television Network, said her Waking the World project will include a TV special that takes a global tour next New Year’s Day.
“From dawn on Bellany Islands, Antarctica, to the last rays of light in Canada, the broadcast gathers stories of transformation to illuminate the lives of women, their families and their communities,” Gray told the FWIC meeting June 6.
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The federal government and corporations will pay for the project. The Associated Country Women of the World, with which FWIC is affiliated, will also participate.
Gray said her project will also include a website to allow women to exchange their stories and wisdom, and a giant tapestry project to which women will be able to contribute.
Gray said she was inspired to do this from the story of the Chilean women who could not speak publicly during Augusto Pinochet’s regime about their disappeared sons and husbands. Instead they used cloth to stitch out the abduction and torture of their loved ones.
Their stories reached the world when these tapestries were smuggled out of Chile.
The project will also hold workshops this fall in eight Canadian centres to share ideas for community action.
Gray told the FWIC about a woman named Sarah,who lived on a garbage dump in Kenya. Motivated by the need to provide a better future for their children, Sarah and other women began a recycling business. A percentage of their profits was pooled into a medical fund so that no one from their community had to go without care and medicine.
Sarah’s story led Gray to her Waking the World concept. She quoted Jean Vanier, son of a former Canadian governor general, who said not to set one’s sights too high.
“We do not have to be saviors of the world,” Vanier said. “We are simply human beings, enfolded in weakness and in hope, called together to change our world, one heart at a time.”
