Leadership

 "Leadership is to speak up, to speak out and to break that silence and not to accept it.  When people ask me what keeps my going it is that I am pissed off at the injustice.   I really am.  I am pissed off at the injustice that women face as we speak now and I celebrate the progress that we have made.  And please do not dismiss that.  There are wonderful mothers that have paved the road.  And that feeling that 'this is not acceptable, not in today's world', that feeling is what kept me going and that's why I started Women for Women International.  Simply a group that says, 'let's reach out.  Let's reach out to our Sisters.  Let's show them that we are here together and let's help them rebuild their lives.'  It is an educational program for women survivors of war.   It teaches them about their Rights.  It also provides them some business and vocational skills that helps them get jobs with the whole premise that access to knowledge and access to resources leads to lasting change.  The dollar is just as important as the knowledge.  We cannot dismiss the two.  Nor can we work on one route and not the other.  Every woman needs to know her Rights and what she is entitled to.  Every woman needs the right to walk in her own space and also have the resources to spend it in the way she chooses to spend it.  It is about choices.  It is about building opportunities where every woman makes whatever choices she wants and some of them are gonna be good choices and some of them are gonna be bad choices and it doesn't matter that's our journeys.  If one woman here decides to cover herself with a headscarf we need to respect her as much as we expect her to respect us for wearing shorts."  Zalnab Salbi