Real People | Real Stories

What a high! There is nothing like showing your labor of love to people who are into it. This festival is a labor or love for its creator, Mrinalini Venkatachalam or Minnie as she is called. She is the Programme Associate – Public Awareness and Youth Initiatives at UNIFEM and put on this film festival because she believes in the power of film. Minnie–I love this woman. She and her sidekick Katrina have shown me a great time. I love that Minnie was more nervous than I was today.

I would say the festival was a total success!

Kids totally get it. I have said this before, but they really see themselves in these girls, even though their lives are so different. I went to 3 very privileged schools today. Like, crazy fancy. I started the presentations asking them what they know about Nepal. They were like little encyclopedias, or wikipedias. Then I asked them why they go to school. “Because we have to,” was an answer in every group.

The first three groups all commented on the terrible condition of Karuna’s school and how good they have it. Lap tops. Lap tops everywhere. Raining Apple Powerbooks. These schools were seriously amazing. I didn’t show the new footage to the first three groups–the footage about Shanta’s death.

However, I did with the last group. I had more time with them and they were older, mostly junior and seniors. I felt myself shaking a bit as the new bit came on the screen. I heard gasps and some girls reached over and hugged one another. There was no clapping at the end. The lights came up and there was just a dull thud in the room. But after the silence, there were more questions and comments then during the rest of the day. People wanted answers that I don’t feel I can give. But I do believe I can show them…once the film is finished.

After the screening, when I walked out into the hallway, audience members were STILL talking about the film amongst themselves. YES!

The day ended with the Press Core from the Overseas Family School interviewing me. (Clearly, a great school. A school with a great vibe. So active. So international. Got me excited about teaching again.) It was a total high. It was four girls, a high school journalistic team, and they asked question after question about Shanta, about the future of girls’ in the developing world, about editing and documentary ethics. They pretty much made my day. It was at this point that I felt, yes. This work is making an impact.

The Press Core

Even though I truly believe stories make a difference, it is so encouraging and still a relief when I see it in action.

Oh, and here is what I had for lunch. Yum. Laksa. A sort of noodle fish soup, a Singapore dish. I had it for breakfast too. I might have it again right now.

This is the other project we were working on last time we were in Nepal– a piece for the Bo M. Karlsson foundation to use for fundraising. It was an amazing experience working with them. The founder, Sonnia Karlsson, created the foundation in the name of her late husband who loved to do good in the world. After this death, Sonnia went out looking for how she could do capital G–GOOD in his name. She went to Nepal and that is where she met Bindu. She is nurse you meet in this piece and the first recipient of a Bo. M. Karlsson scholarship. It allowed her to finish nursing school. She is a serious power house, along with all the other recipients.

The BMKF pays for women in Nepal to go to college. It is THE ONLY NGO doing this. Less than 3% of women in Nepal go to college. Pretty amazing.  Having all of the BMKF recipients in the same room together to film these interviews was such a trip. You could seriously feel the empowerment. The Bo M. Karlsson–doing really good work. Support them!

That’s right! Somebody pinch me!  I was invited by UNIFEM (United Nation Development Fund for Women) to present at their Empowering Women Film Festival. Besides presenting at the film festival on Saturday, I will also be showing our film and leading discussions at four different schools tomorrow. I am so excited!

As I was waiting in line at customs tonight I was thinking, this is exactly what I want to be doing right now. I am arriving in a new country I know very little about. I am going to show a film I have worked so hard on and has barely seen the light of day. I get to talk to people for entire weekend about the subject I care about most– girls’ education. And specifically, Shanta and her family. I get to share her story with people I am pretty sure are really going to listen–who really care.

For those of you who don’t know, Shanta was one of the main subjects of Three: Impressions from the Struggle for Girls’ Education. Shanta, who was a powerful force–determined to become a doctor in order to return to her village to teach the girls and women about family planning, committed suicide just over a year ago.

This shocked everyone. Her family, friends, teachers…us.

Suicide is the leading cause of death for women in Nepal ages 14-49. True story. In the last few years, suicide has eclipsed death during childbirth as the #1 cause of death.

Scott and I returned to Nepal this last winter to try to figure out why and to see how her family is doing. It was the biggest experience (and I am fairly certain I can speak for Scott here as well) of our lives. I thought I knew a fair bit about poverty. I would go as far to say I felt I understood it in some intellectual way, at least. Well, staying with Shanta’s family threw me for a loop. But more on that later….

Now I am here in Singapore. I’m here to share our new footage and to begin telling the story of Shanta. Before I left, I had a friend and fellow editor, Dina, look at our latest footage, which is still very new and raw. Her remark afterward as she wiped tears from her eyes was, “Shanta is as powerful dead as she was alive.”

I don’t know if this is what Shanta would have wanted–to have her story told to UNIFEM. But my best guess is, she wouldn’t mind.

I want to thank Debby Ng who is the one who turned UNIFEM on to our work with girls’ education. She is an amazing Singaporean photographer. I met her in Nepal last winter and we pretty much hit it off BIG TIME. She can’t make it to the festival because she is photographing migrating birds. How cools is that?

Oh, here is a picture of my mom seeing me off at the airport–the Voice of Reason!!! (She is currently the mascot for Sound Transit.) I love to see my mom’s size finally match her BIG personality.