World People's Blog

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

Zhang Jihui is a head nurse in the general ward of the No. 1 Hospital in Guangzhou City. During the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) in China in 2003, she accepted the assignment to work in the temporary Sars ward without hesitation. She worked 12 to 16 hours per day for 83 days without adequate supplies of oxygen and water. She served patients selflessly with love and courage. Her efforts have deeply impressed each of her patients, who come to understand what an « angel in white » really means.

She says: « Let us give others convenience, and give ourselves difficulties; give others happiness, and give ourselves sadness; give others safety, and give ourselves risks ».

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Jihui Zhang – China

She works for the no.1 People’s Hospital in Guangzhou City.

Zhang Jihui, born in 1963, is the head nurse of no.1 People’s Hospital in Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province. During the SARS period in 2003, she cared for patients without considering her own safety. Later she published a book called ‘Diaries of the Head Nurse’, which was much acclaimed by the public.

In the most critical period of SARS, Guangzhou set up a special ward for SARS patients. As an ordinary head nurse of the no.1 People’s Hospital, Zhang volunteered to work at the frontline. She worked continuously in the special ward for almost three months, days and nights.

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Linked with the Naz Foundation (India) Trust.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

Anjali works with the most marginalized groups of society-women and children, and gay, lesbian, transgendered and bisexual communities. Her work on HIV/AIDS issues over the past two decades has changed the way India’s policymakers address these issues. When the Naz Foundation (India) Trust, which Anjali established in 1995, first began work, there was remarkable resistance to even acknowledging that HIV was a problem. However, through the sustained lobbying of groups working on education, health and women’s empowerment, Anjali has not only educated and trained them to incorporate HIV issues in ongoing programs, but also challenged the laws and norms that marginalize women and sexual minorities.

She says: « This work has to be a lifelong commitment ».

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Anjali Gopalan – India

She works for the Naz Foundation (India) Trust.

Anjali Gopalan was born in 1957 in Chennai. Her father was an officer in the Indian Air Force and her mother a homemaker. She studied in both India and the US, and her degree in political science, a postgraduate diploma in journalism, and a Masters in international development have helped her immeasurably in her radical work.

Anjali lived and worked in New York for nearly a decade before she returned to India to continue her work on HIV/AIDS and marginalization issues. She had begun work on HIV/AIDS and related issues in New York with undocumented migrant labor, schoolchildren, and South Asian communities.

Moving to India with this experience in hand, in 1995 she established the Naz Foundation (India) Trust, an HIV/AIDS service organization that concentrates on prevention and care. The foundation works on issues of sexuality, rights, and training, and runs an orphanage-and-home for children and women living with HIV.

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Linked with Sanlaap India, with Oxfam (India) Trust, New Delhi, and with Terre des Hommes, divers groupes indépendants, also with its India Programme.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

When a study on sexually abused children took Indrani Sinha (born 1950) to the brothel areas of Kolkata, the lives of the women there shook her to the core. From then on, she and Sanlaap (sanlaap means dialogue), the organization she set up, have been working to eliminate stigma, and to integrate women in prostitution and their children into mainstream society. While the setting up of safe homes and motivating government agencies have been significant victories, Indrani’s greatest triumph is the fulfilling lives that the women in and from Sanlaap’s shelter homes now lead.

She says: « When I started in 1989, I did not have any role models from whom I could learn. Therefore, I learnt from the women in red-light areas through listening to their needs ».

Drawing a parallel with another form of violence, the use of child labor, Indrani says, « Would we advocate that child labor be legalized just because it exists? A form of violence cannot be accepted merely because it is there and has been for centuries; the basis of its existence needs to be challenged ».

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Indrani Sinha – India

She works for Sanlaap.

Indrani Sinha was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in West Bengal on 15 March 1950, and grew up in Patna, Bihar. She completed her graduation in English literature from Kolkata’s Jadavpur University. Indrani’s life, as a young woman, was tough: when she was only 17, her father’s retirement meant that she had to manage both her work and studies, and shoulder the financial responsibilities at home.

She was married in 1973, but soon realized that she was in a dysfunctional marriage; nonetheless, she waited for their son to grow up before she left it. She married a friend who respects her work in 1985, and has two daughters now.

Although Indrani’s career began with teaching English, in 1973-76, in a well-known Hindi-medium school in Calcutta, she soon realized that her interest lay in the development sector.

In 1982, she joined Terre des Hommes (see the India Programme), « a network of ten national organizations working for the rights of children and to promote equitable development without racial, religious, political, cultural or gender-based discrimination » (see also on wikipedia), and then moved on to the Oxfam India Trust, where she worked for five years in women’s empowerment.

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She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

Meghiben has inspired some 2500 women in the entire Pachcham area to take up the cause of human rights, empowerment, and justice for women. She has successfully combated the stigma associated with her status as a divorcee. For the past ten years, she has been working to strengthen women’s grassroots collectives and women’s involvement in the socioeconomic arena in her village and district. Her work with legal aid has been crucial to women’s lives in the area. Most innovative of all her efforts, though, is the printing of a newsletter for neoliterates, encouraging them to express themselves in print and thus making a public space available to women.

She says: « I am interested in seeing women sell the products that they are producing or value-adding in a fair price market. Not only that, I would also like to see them control the resources thus generated, resulting in complete socio-economic empowerment of rural women ».

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Meghiben Samariya – India

She works for Ujjas Mahila Sangathan UMS.

Meghiben Samariya was born in 1966 in village Habay, Bhuj district, as one of four children. Married off at 16, she stayed with her husband for a year. During that time, she worked in the salt pans and developed a skin rash, which gave her in-laws the opportunity to abuse her as a « leper » and evict her. She was only 17 years old. She sought legal redress, but it was seven years before she was awarded a compensation of Rs 10,000.

Meghiben is now divorced and lives with her parents. Although not formally educated, her keen mind and instinctive grasp of situations has helped her building herself into a force to reckon with.

When members of the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan (KMVS) began working in her area, Meghiben took an active part in their activities. She started out aiming to support herself, and then gradually became part of the core team that took on the responsibility of building the capacities of the grassroots women’s collectives.

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Linked with Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan – KMVS.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

Hakkuben Theba was born in 1966 into a poor farming family from the highly conservative Theba community in Gujarat. Her journey, from a destitute widow to a community leader and a trainer of leaders, was arduous. In the past 15 years, this woman has inspired more than 3000 women to become active members of a women’s collective. Gradually, Hakkuben and her colleagues have changed the nature of the village through women’s empowerment, generating alternative sources of income during drought, and ecological regeneration.

She says: « I would like to create a platform for the next generation of women so that they can learn from our experience and their life becomes easier ».

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Hakkuben Theba – India

She works for Saiyerejo Sangathan (not on the internet).

Hakkuben Theba (born 1966), from Dador in Gujarat, is a rural farmer from a marginalized family involved in dry farming (rain-dependent and prone to crop failure) and animal husbandry.

Dry farming is characteristic of the region, which is both drought-prone and suffers from high groundwater salinity. She belongs to the Theba, a small, conservative Muslim community. They marry their daughters within the community, are very proud of their culture and heritage, and do not encourage or practice dowry. This is one of the many reasons why there is absolutely no case of domestic violence, another being that people from the community do not drink alcohol. They are close-knit, usually frowning upon women and girls working outside the home.

Hakkuben was a farmer herself before her parents married her off at the age of 14. Since then, she has given birth to three boys and a girl, of whom only a boy and the girl survive. She was widowed in 1998, and her brother-in-law and his wife encouraged her to make an effort to be financially independent. This is when she came into contact with, and joined, the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan KMVS, which had been working in the area since 1991–92.

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Linked with Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan – KMVS.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

For 15 years, Lataben Sachde (born 1963) has been working with elected women, and studying their perspective on good governance. The change her leadership has brought about is evident in the way that women leaders execute their positional power in their respective villages. i.e., responsibly. An estimated 500 « leaders » have stepped out of their restrictive social mores, challenging the patriarchal setup. Lataben and her team are the quiet force that has initiated a powerful grassroots movement of women claiming their public spaces.

She says: « I am hopeful that in the next ten to fifteen years, women will be more actively involved in the ‘governance movement’ and that it will translate from paper to reality. My role will be to provide as much information to as many women as I can ».

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Lataben Sachde – India

She works for the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan KMVS.

Lataben’s specialty lies in interacting with women who have been elected, and understanding their perspective on what comprises good governance.

Lataben Sachde was born in 1963 into a lower-middleclass family from a village close to Bhuj in Gujarat’s Kutch district. After completing her higher secondary school, she had to give up studying, as she was married into a traditional family.

She began working with the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan (KMVS) a little over 14 years ago. Her husband’s friend came to know about KMVS, and that it was looking for a local woman who could work with the community. Lataben was initially not too keen on taking on the responsibility, but her husband encouraged her to at least give it a shot. He supported her quietly through the difficult days that followed her decision to join.

Over the years, she has had to struggle with her in-laws’ opposition to her work in an unconventional environment. She also had to overcome her own lack of exposure and specific educational skills within the organization. Today, Lataben is one of the leaders of the KVMS.

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Linked with Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan KMVS.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

Alkaben Jani’s work in the Kutch area of Gujarat is informed by her intimate knowledge of the oppressive social fabric of the region. For the past 15 years, she has been extensively organizing, mobilizing, and training rural women, focusing on capacity-building and leadership training. The result of these efforts is the emergence of a strong and motivated team of 12,712 leaders at the community level, who are leading other women in the area to surface and take the reins both in their homes and outside.

She says: « The human sea is full of pearls that need to be identified and polished so as to give them the shine. I was identified and groomed and now I feel it is my moral responsibility to groom the rest ».

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Alkaben Jani – India

She works for Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan KMVS.

Alkaben Jani (born 1964) is a single woman who has had to struggle against family expectations and pressures to pursue her convictions and work with women less privileged than her. She hails from a middleclass Kutchi Brahmin family. Her father, a manager in a cotton company, had passed high school, and her mother had studied up to grade VII. The couple had three daughters and three sons, five of whom are, at the least, graduates. Alkaben is a postgraduate, having completed her Masters in Commerce.

She was in Kutch until the age of seven, and then her father was transferred to Karnataka, where she completed her education. Alkaben’s background, therefore, is a mixed-urban culture. She returned to Kutch as soon as she completed her university education, and joined a school as a teacher. She realized soon, though, that she was compromising heavily on her values and principles.

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She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: « Do not dismay. For the life of the women, not even one step backwards will be taken ».

A woman of contrasts. Brave in confronting struggles. Sympathetic. Wise. Serene, as she meditates on what to do. Of solid principles and strong roots. An Ambassador of Conscience. Gentle like the breeze. Persistent. Disapproving of exaggeration. A life full of obstacles in the search for justice. 61 years of hard work against the current tide. Hilda Marina Morales Trujillo, Guatemalan, dreams of a world with equal opportunities for women and men.

She says also: « I saw that women did not have much support to gain access to justice. There were no women’s shelters, which are indispensable, otherwise they have to go back home, where they might suffer even more violence. People used to say that the legislation was advanced, but, in fact, it discriminated women ».

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Hilda Marina Morales Trujillo – Guatemala

She is a University professor in Family Law and Human Rights. She drew up the academic basis for the Diploma in Gender Studies and the Post graduate Certificate in Women’s Rights for the University of San Carlos de Guatemala, where she holds the post of head professor of that subject. She also teaches at the University of Rafael Landívar.

Hilda Marina Morales Trujillo was born in a poor home in the Petén province of Guatemala, on the border with Mexico. Her mother, housewife, dressmaker, owner of a bazar; her father: agriculturist. Hilda has become independent thanks to her mother’s example and her father’s approval.

She was initially a primary school teacher. During her time at university studying law, she became aware of the problem of mistreated women. “Nowadays, you hear about it, but in those days you did not hear so much. Then, women who were victims of violence and slanders had no alternatives”.

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Linked with Center for Social Development CSD.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

Chea Vannath (born 1948) is President of the Center for Social Development CSD, which promotes school curricula on transparency, monitors the courts and parliament and organizes public debates on the Khmer Rouge tribunal, corruption and other issues. After the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975, Chea was forced to work in labor camps before escaping to Thailand and on to the US. After living as a refugee in America for more than ten years, she returned to Cambodia in 1992 to participate in rebuilding her country.

She says: « Not anymore will I allow only one party to lead my country ».

She says also: « “He (my father) was committed, had tremendous energy and effort, and possessed a progressive vision. He did not blame others. When he talked, he made me think. Once he was asked by other villagers while we were forced to work in the field by the Khmer Rouge, how it feels to not be rich anymore, and he replied that he still felt very fortunate. He did not pay attention to money but to human beings”.

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Chea Vannath – Cambodia

She works for the Center for Social Development CSD.

A daughter of a jeweler, Vannath grew up in a secure and elegant environment. As a girl, she went to school in a chauffer-driven car. Vannath speaks three languages fluently: Khmer, English and French. After getting her diploma in public financial management, she worked as a fiscal officer in the treasury department. She married a physician, a major in the Cambodian army. They have one son.

Then came the Khmer Rouge in April 1975. Vannath’s life would never be the same again.

From « year zero », as the Khmer Rouge regime called their reign of terror, Vannath along with her parents and her husband and son were forced to leave home and made to work the fields in several provinces along with millions other Cambodians. In three years and eight months, together with many other people, she moved to different places, wherever the Khmer Rouge needed forced labor. She got up at four in the morning to pick tobacco, and saw men being taken away never to be seen again.

Vannath witnessed, for the first time, death, torture, and misery. In short, human suffering. From these experiences, she learned to understand life and suffering, life as ever changing and not permanent.

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