Exclusive interview with the Founder of Girl Child Network World Wide
Betty Makoni is an extraordinary woman whose work has touched and continues to transform lives of hundreds of thousands of girls in Africa.
Since 1999, Betty has mobilized over 300,000 girls in Zimbabwe to be empowered to reach their full potential. She has mobilized financial resources to build four Girls Empowerment Villages, a unique model that provides safe shelter and healing for sexually abused girls. Today, over 70,000 sexually abused girls have been empowered and rehabilitated through family, school and in the community. As she prepares to launch her new book “A Woman, Once a Girl-Breaking Silence”, Betty shares with us how the idea to write the book came about and how she felt while working on it.
Betty, what motivated you to write this book?
It’s a book that came a long way. First I must say I worked on the frontline rescuing girls from situations where they were raped, forced to marry, where they were not in school, or re-instated them back to school, took them for rehabilitation in Girls Empowerment Village.
And everything that happened when I was at the forefront doing that really struck my heart, I felt pain, sometimes I felt helpless, but a lot of times I found myself regaining energy, so each time I encountered a girl who was in a situation that looked hopeless, the only way I put out pain was to sit down, take my paper, take my pen and start writing a poem.
As I was writing, a poem, I was also taking away the pain, so I must say what motivated me to put together the book is to make a statement globally to say there are people who are working on the frontline, there are people who become victims because they are assisting victims. Unless their story is understood by the world, the world might not think anything is being done, that anything is going on. And you know some people are trying hard.
The book is tracking my own personal story, my mother’s story, who died at age 33, and my story of being a rape victim at age 6, and I put all that together to make a statement to the world that when you become a woman, the journey to being a woman is a journey that is marred with challenges; it’s a journey that is painful, it’s a journey that every woman in the world goes through regardless of your class, race, language, or your religion.
Patriarchy holds the key to anybody’s life, it’s a man’s world, and then I was like taking a sigh of relief and saying, I’ve finally arrived. This is what I wanted to see, an organization that champions the rights of the child. Women who through their stories, help other girls to heal. I also wanted to leave a legacy, and a legacy in the form of a book, everyone who has walked a journey has got a story, but how my story is different is that every part of my journey, I see pain, I see passion, I see perseverance, I see resilience, that journey is a journey that I want to share.
And then as somebody who is now a speaker around the world, I feel after speaking, a lot of people really want to touch my hand, they want to be close to me, they want to stay closer, what I’m simply saying is that here is the book, read the book even after I’ve gone. And then I simply also wanted people to donate, you know as African women we depend on funding coming from other sources, but if I sell my book like what I used to do selling tomatoes and onions on the street, then I take a little bit of money from there, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a dollar or two dollars, I take it and give it to a girl to go to school. I would have that satisfaction that I did not remain a beggar. I also transformed into a donor, I’m also making a statement that my inspirational story is a donation to the next generation of girls.
How did you feel while working on the book? Did it make you relieve the past sad experiences?
When I was working on the book, I really felt relieved. I really felt each piece of pain coming out because it’s so chronologically done - from the day I told myself that this is the work that I want to do. Then I also went on to sample some poems on the actual work I went to do, and then the backlash I faced, the trials and tribulations of a girls’ rights defender, then I went on to show that it’s hard to help, you also become a victim.
Then I went on to make a statement that despite all this, I’m still going to do it. I’m not going to stop, up until the age of retirement, this is the job I’ve always wanted to do. So I really want people to know that I relieved the memories in a positive way, that as I wrote each and every part of the book, I had some girls who had transformed, so in the book you are also going to see some girls who followed my footsteps and also protested against abuse, you are going to see real life images of what is taking place. Each picture first reminds me who I was some 40 years back, but each picture again reminds me of where I am going and why I should keep that journey.
So yes, sad past experiences, but it’s good that I turned the past experiences into something positive, to see a girl smile to see a girl visible, to see a girl coming out.
What keeps you going Betty?
As you know I’m somebody who has developed a resistant coat. Anything that comes on me bounces back, I no longer feel as if I should be a victim again, I refuse to be a victim, that’s the most critical part about being the activist that I am. I experienced it and now I told myself, enough, I won’t have anything of this sort coming my way.
The only thing that keeps me going is to see a girl who comes to me from far away, even from Zimbabwe - they don’t have Facebook, they don’t have all these technologies, but just the thought that a poor girl has gone to an Internet Cafe to say: “Betty, I’m still going on even if you are in exile, even if you have gone, we are still following your footsteps,” that gives me satisfaction that I did something good, I did something that I was supposed to be doing.
So every positive story coming from a girl really gives me energy. I’ve got girls who are directors, lawyers, accountants, so when you see your girls flourishing, there is no need for you to keep going to next level. I’m at a level where I’m just a queen, a queen getting reports, a queen getting requests, a queen being asked to speak to inspire, but I do have some foot soldiers, those who are on the ground who have taken up, so it’s good for me that with my leadership, I was at the frontline, now I’m at the top of the belt where I’m just commanding. But remember I was also one of the girls who really needed this help, I gave it to myself, I’m now giving it to others, so when you pay back, it’s not like you are losing anything, when you are paying back, you are being grateful, that’s what really keeps me back, and my poems keep me back, when people want me out of this work, I kick back in, I take every poetic language in me to say you should go do what you feel like doing.
How’s Girl Child Network doing now?
Girl Child Network World Wide is thriving, we are getting a lot of support. We have been screening “Tapestries of Hope”, the award winning documentary on my work. The whole of the US is mobilized to donate. And here in the UK I have started a journey to take my book to the people, to say these are the stories. When we read about these stories, can’t we be moved to help?
I’m at the stage where I’m telling the story, many people don’t know it. In order for us to mobilize as many resources as we need, we need to come out to say to people, here we are and this is what we are doing. But also I want to say that the Girls Empowerment Fund that I started a year ago is getting momentum, it’s getting a lot of people donating to it, let’s hope it keeps going. Girl Child Network is now in Uganda, Sierra Leone, we are strengthening our efforts in Zimbabwe, the UK remains as our main office, so we keep going.
We are moving on the forward side, we are not going to look back again, of course we face challenges, we are still getting a lot of people who attack us through the Internet, Internet is now being increasingly used to attack human rights defenders like us to confuse our work, but also we get very good people who come to strengthen the work.
For instance, it was really funny when somebody said ‘you received the CNN Heroes Award, we heard that CNN took back the award from you’. Then I said to myself, good people who do such good work like CNN who profile the work of heroes, they go on supporting you in a way that I’m not even able to describe here, it’s really so positive, it’s really so good. So I must say we’ve made a global breakthrough in Girl Child Network, we are here, coming from a small village in Africa and you find yourself here in Essex with an office set up for global excellence for all the activities girls are doing in the world. I know one by one people are coming. Rome was not built in one day and that exactly fits what we are saying.
BETTY MAKONI’S LINKS
www.girlchildnetworkworldwide.org
www.muzvarebettymakoni.org
Follow Betty Makoni on Twitter: Betty_Makoni
Follow Girl Child Network Worldwide on Twitter GCNW
Join Betty Makoni on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Muzvare-Betty-Makoni/118264034906772
By Stephen Ogongo Ongong’a
