THE University of Guyana Female Empowerment Movement (UGFEM) celebrated their third anniversary on Friday evening with a small group of students sharing their individual reflective stories.

Speaking at a forum held in the Education Lecture Theatre, Turkeyen Campus, founder of the organisation, Lisa Hussain, said redefining the meaning of “empowerment” for females in society, was the main reason for founding of the organisation.
“I realised that the perception of being an empowered women was twisted. Instead of us helping out each other and looking out for our fellow sisters, I realised that female empowerment meant that I have to be amazing and great, and if I needed to step on you to empower myself………………………………………………” Hussain said.

She added: “To me that’s not what it is about. Who developed the pyramid… a lot of women, it starts with jealousy. I see you have prettier hair, I see you’re brighter, I see something more amazing about you and instead of seeing that you’re good at that and I am good at something else, I end up being jealous… So UGFEM, we started with embracing each other, and thought of ways how all of us can work together and become stronger.”
After evolving over the years, Hussain said they have adapted the motto “Her empowerment, our development”.

“Once women are empowered, educated and have opportunities that give development for the entire campus and by extension, the entire Guyana… Our first campaign was hashtag, compliment a girl (#complimentagirl), where we walked around campus with compliments in a jar, and walked up to random girls on campus to pull a compliment,” she said.
That campaign sparked the interest of more girls on campus and the entire movement expanded and produced results over the three years.
Hussain said the organisation later accepted males, since it is also important that they know how to deal with, and respect women, and they have been seeing and experiencing tremendous results.

“The pace of it is changing and girls are more willing to open up, talk about their self-esteem issues and so on. We have leadership workshops, self-esteem workshops and other things that will help us to be equipped to execute our mandate,” she said.
Hussain graduated from UG last year. However, an executive body is elected every year to continue with the work of the organisation. The new body was elected on Friday, and its members are already looking to execute programmes and increase collaboration with other organisations.