Gira Ingoma – One Drum Per Girl
January 2023 - March 2024
Drumming, dance and creative workshops/festivals, enabling girls to address inequality by exploring their empowerment through non-traditional creative roles….
“Gira Ingoma – One Drum Per Girl” aims to address persistent gender stereotypes and discriminatory patterns (norms, barriers, practices, perceptions, etc…) that prevent girls from engaging in non-traditional activities/roles in the creative and cultural industries such as drumming, warrior dance (intore), poetry (kwivuga), singing, juggling, etc… thus perpetuating inequalities and exclusion.
Two hundred and fifty (250) girls from ten (10) primary and/or secondary schools in Huye District, supported by their teachers and trainers, will engage in a quarterly dialogue with policy makers at school, sector, district, provincial and national levels on how to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment in the cultural sector. The aim is to empower Rwandan girls to dream, act and reinvent themselves on their own terms.
The Woman Cultural Centre (WCC), in partnership with Ingoma Nshya, Women’s Initiatives (INWI) and Nofit State (Wales), will provide eighty (80) sessions of workshops in drumming, warrior dance, poetry, singing and juggling over the course of ten (10) months. Through these workshops, the beneficiaries (250 girls) will write letters and create songs, poems, videos and performances to communicate to policy makers their aspirations for a women-friendly culture. The beneficiaries (250 girls) will invite the policy makers to their own festival, planned on a quarterly basis, for various talks and performances portraying the women they want to be in the future.
Themes
- Cultivating well-being and mental health
- Tackling child and gender-based violence
Approaches
- Building in gender (and diversity) inclusive considerations
- Designing inter and intra generational processes of dialogue
Policy outputs
The outcome is to model a new image for girls in Rwanda and a new tradition of gender equality: with respect, unity and joy. The beneficiaries of the project are girls at the service of themselves, their own rights and their own dreams, and the gain is for the country’s women AND its culture, as it is clearly linked to Rwanda’s revised National Gender Policy, which aims to “address the persistent cultural norms and stereotypes that hinder the effectiveness of gender equality and equity”.
Principal Investigator
Latest updates
- Podcast
MAP podcast – episode 4
Episode 4 focuses on MAP activities in Rwanda, specifically on a medium grants project: “Gira Ingoma – One Drum Per Girl.” MAP’s Principal Investigator, Prof. Ananda Breed, whom we spoke to in Episode 1, interviews artist and project founder Gakire Katese Odile about this fascinating project and how it aims to address persistent gender stereotypes and discriminatory norms that prevent girls in Rwanda from engaging in non-traditional activities/roles in the creative and cultural industries....
- Event
The third Ingoma Nshya Festival, Rwanda – December 2023
EVENT DATE:Ingoma Nshya Festival is a platform that aims to promote girls’ talents, give them the power to dream, act, and reinvent themselves on their own terms; and advocate for a culture that is women-friendly. The third edition took place in Huye, on 30 December 2023 at the Gymnasium of Huye Campus....
- Event
The Fourth Ingoma Nshya Festival, Rwanda – March 2024
EVENT DATE:The Gira Ingoma - One Drum Per Girl project will hold the fourth edition of the Ingoma Nshya Festival on March 2024....
