Creating ourselves in our own image

The Woman’s Leadership Centre has co-created a project titled “creating ourselves in our own image” with young lesbian women to promote human rights for lesbians that are often under various forms of oppression in the different cultures that make up the Namibian society.
The project earlier this week held a photography, poetry and film evening at the Franco Namibia Cultural Centre. The exhibition will run until 16 June, providing voice and visibility for the lives of young lesbians from across Namibia who articulate their resilience and resistance to stigma and discrimination through creative forms of expression.
The project which started in 2013, aims at strengthening the resilience of young lesbians through the use of creative forms of expression, through writing, dance and photography as tools for building pride through increased self−knowledge and sisterhood, enhancing the voice of young lesbians as citizens, as artists and storytellers, in co−creating the dreams, visions and hopes of this country.
The project educates young lesbians on their human rights and develops a feminist critical analysis of the patriarchal ideologies and structures in society that undermine homophobia, discrimination and social exclusion of people with diverse gender identities and sexual orientations. Thereby ‘Creating ourselves in our own image’.
Speaking about the project, Advocate John Walters from Ombudsman Namibia, said “The essence of human rights is the recognition of the dignity and equality of every human being without discrimination. Every person, by sole virtue of being a human being possesses certain rights whose enjoyment no-one can impede, and which all states are obliged to guarantee.”
The advocates of these project are gay and lesbians, from all walks of life, whose intertwining tales and life experiences build resilience through strengthened identity and pride.