Overview of the discussion report
In Our university;” Al-bukhary International University” located in Malaysia, Alor Seta kedah, we have been introduced to so many important courses that are now helping us to shape our lives and the lives of other individuals as well. In this third trimester of the first and pioneer undergraduates, we were introduced to Civil Society as one of the university Courses. A civil society is asset of nonprofit making organizations and institutions, that operate voluntarily, aiming at the well-being of others. Throughout, Non-Government Organizations were pointed out as the best example or representative of Civil Society organizations.
After acknowledging the work done by these organizations, for the panel discussion, my group decided to focus on the Role Played by these Organizations in empowering women economically. Under this, we were to focus on four main areas: NGO’s empowerment of women in the technological field, the role NGO’s play in empowering women in the household field, in the agricultural field, lastly, violence women face in the process of being empowered by NGOs.
The process
Our lecturer mr.John britoh told us to form groups of five members, and we did. My members were; Nuruat kobusiinge(myself) as the moderator, and other four panelists , that is Nan moe zainab, Miss Suneeda, sariah and Munadir Muhammad mahi. We had so many other topics as well as disagreements on the topics to choose from, and the condition was to choose from what we covered in lectures. Sometimes we chose from broad topics, and our lecturer always guided us. We did approach him many times until we chose our final topic as the “Role played by NGOs in empowering women economically”, as mentioned above. Next, we wrote the full proposal and planned for several meetings. I think my group had some weaknesses. For example, when we had meetings, time management was poor, and some members sometimes failed to show up. Actually, in the end, still members did not show up at the final panel discussion time. Two of them did not show up due to sickness and some other reasons. This was a big set back to our group. So out of five, 3members were present.
The Implementation
We had our panel discussion on June 17th 2013 , at 3:30pm. The three members; myself (moderator), and the two panelists Mr.Munadir Muhammad mahi discussing women empowerment in the technological field, and miss Sariah , presenting Women empowerment in the household field, managed to present. Our strength is that even after being disappointed at the last minute, we gathered ourselves and presented to the audience.Even though we felt so down and the mood was bit low, we did support each other. Our points were well elaborated and clear statistics given.
Some of our weaknesses were that, we did not discuss other main and important parts of our topic because they were to be discussed by other panelists, and also, it was a last minute shock that we could not just arrange and discuss their parts in just few minutes, else, our statistics would be wrong.
Also we were not able to utilize all our 30 minutes due to few members.
Learning/Reflection of the Panel Discussion
As an individual, I did my own research before moderating on this topic. I found so many Non-government organizations Worldwide, all making efforts to assist vulnerable groups of women workers /and non-workers to go into employment, setup micro and small enterprises, or increase their income earning potentials to make them sustainable, and to get them out of poverty, linking them and supporting them using different measures. They have taken measures to engage and empower women in the technological field, forexample avoiding discriminating them in the ICT field, offered them job opportunities in that field, changed their attitudes towards technology, and offered programs that encourages and develops skills of promising young female leaders by providing them with specialized information technology (IT) training and opportunities, and many other measures in that field.
About the household field we discussed what important role women play in household under NGOS’ help”- Women – a caring mother of children, a good wife of husband, and a model leader of a community, the rights of women in planning and taking part in making decision of the household (together with the husband). What role a Single mother plays both as a mother and father in family.
It was a nice discussion and really motivational, only that we did not manage to discuss to the audience all we had intended to due to some emergencies
Conclusion
We all had weaknesses, and we are still eager to learn and improve ourselves, and also learn how to handle and coordinate different groups of people, since we are in an international university. I now realize how practice makes one perfect, through all the mistakes and failures, until a certain goal and satisfaction is attained. I have been introduced to this great aspect or away of helping others “civil Society”. With the guidance God, Our lecturers and fellow individuals, we truly believe that we shall reach great heights, and we shall positively change the world.
References
Plamena Ivanova. (2007, March 5). Women’s roles in the Household: Popular Press Depictions of gender roles in the USA (1870-1960) [Web log post].
Linda Raftree(Tuesday 27 November 2012). Empowering girls through information, communication and technology, The Guardian, from http: //www.guardian.co.uk/global-development-professionals-network/2012/nov/27/improving-ict-access-to-girls
ITU News.(2013) A bright future in ICT — opportunities for a new generation of women, https://itunews.itu.int/En/2471-A-bright-future-in-ICT-opportunities-for-a-new-generation-of-women-.note.aspx Djam Bakhshandegi(2013) http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues_africa.