Nancy and I are incredibly grateful for your gifts of support – from heart to heart, from grass roots to grass roots, we truly cherish our core family of donors! We also believe there is no more powerful way to help improve the world than by thousands of small acts of kindness, building the foundations for a movement for change. That is what Nancy started on that fateful day in 2010 when she stood before the chiefs and dignitaries of her tribe and made her pledge to help others! This pledge inspired me to help her too and whilst 7 years seems a vast amount of time, I feel we are closer to my goal of helping Nancy fulfil her potential to be an example and eradicate gender inequality and violence against women, particularly in the remote areas.
What shines through is her inner courage and sense of purpose as well as an extraordinary mature sense of connection and responsibility to others. But she’s an ordinary young woman too and her story embodies the potential of every woman and man whose quest is to life fully and fulfill her own talents and potentialities to help others too.
Our new website can accept donations!
The new website is able to accept donations directly in the hope you will invite your friends into our movement and help us build even greater links between grass root supporters like you and Nancy’s grass root movement in her remote part of Kenya. For we cannot rely on the global institutions for this change. It must come from us too!
Nancy speaks about the impact she hopes and visits London!
For a glimpse of the impact Nancy could have when showing the film to young girls threatened with ” the knife” during the “cutting season” – please see our new film on the top of our home page. It also includes a clip of the Commonwealth Secretariat’s event, a talk to the granddaughter of a well known Suffragette, and aerial footage of ‘The March’ as Nancy and a group of activists sing, dance and walk their way across their tribal lands!
Please share this new short film ‘far and wide!’
I hope you might find time to share this short film with others to encourage donations to finish the edit and help Nancy spread her message ‘far and wide’. We still need completion funding for the film and then later financial support for Nancy’s group of activists to transport and screen the film all over her tribal lands as part of a programme for change.
2016 Progress and our steps to build our movement:
Last year was intensely busy helping the Commonwealth Secretariat plan their screening event and panel discussion. It was brilliant that as a result they flew Nancy over as their guest of honour, to mark the Elimination of Violence Against Women Day.
Nancy In London
The logistics of flying Nancy to the UK was something else, but having her in the UK felt like the most wonderful reward for the many years of blood, sweat and tears we’ve shared, even after she was saved from the knife. To be able to show her Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and even attend Lion King as a special treat was surreal, especially considering how we first met in a mud compound on a far hill in the remotest part of Kenya! For a photo-story of her visit see my news story about her London trip!
Nancy’s sponsors
Her visit to London was also a chance for her to meet her new sponsors the Madrinha Trust who are generously supporting Nancy’s teacher training college.
Progress report
Generosity Crowd Funding has been closed and Nancy’s site has been rebuilt to accept donations directly to the project (no fees or bank charges) as well as to be able to send you news updates on Nancy’s progress, as we reach our goals. Sadly due to my mother’s illness and sad passing, the need to juggle work to cover the project, progress has been slower than hoped but a journey of a thousand miles starts with a step and we can at least see the final peak on the horizon now.
The Edit Is Progressing
I’ve digitised the footage from 104 tapes and funded the translations of most of the key footage with your donations. I’ve subtitled a large chunk of the rushes and plotted the story arc on paper and on the timeline. There is still shooting to do to pick up where Nancy is currently as well as tell her story more fully. This is an epic task as the final film will be multi-layered and a very powerful story documenting one of the remotest pioneers pushing at the frontiers of the feminine empowerment movement in the 21st century.
Amazing support from Amanzi restaurant and Lodge in Harare
Last year my eternally generous sister Julia and her husband Andrew Mama, put on a musical event at Amanzi in Harare, Zimbabwe to fund raise for Nancy. She is currently doing that again, which is extraordinarily kind of her given the uncertainties in Zimbabwe.
The task ahead
I need to ring fence many months to block out the edit to know what more is needed. Nancy’s grass roots activist group is on standby and ready to work with her story on film, but they too will need funding and a customised distribution strategy for maximum impact too.
Nancy’s group can start work with the short extract already cut, but the longer film will multiply her impact in manifold ways. It will tell Nancy’s inspiring story in much more intimate and powerful detail and she will use it to unpick and expose the false projections which underpin FGM and other harmful practices. Short versions targeting key opinion groups, as well as multi-media broadcast, will spread the word still further.
My appeal to you – Friends of Nancy’s!
I appeal to you to explain to one person a week for the next 4 weeks, why it is important to donate or help in some way! That way we can build a force for change to be reckoned with. Please share the film and Like our Facebook page so we can keep in touch.
https://www.facebook.com/nancysgirlrev/
Nancy’s movement relies upon our support for these courageous pioneers who are often challenging the situation and facing extraordinary jeopardy! By donating we show them solidarity for the stand they are making to stay whole. This sends ripples of hope across the world. These women are some of the poorest and most disempowered in the world and if we can empower them to end FGM and child marriage, it will transform the family and community as well as levels of economic and cultural development. Kofi Annan says it in a nutshell.
‘There is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women’.
Nancy’s film is a chance for men and women in the west to support the awakening of women and the empowerment movement across Africa!
Nancy is part of the worldwide Women’s Empowerment Movement!
Nancy’s story has an archetypal quality and a sprinkling of magic too. Like a fairy story she has transcended the role of victim and embodies a level of self empowerment that perhaps can only be acquired from transcending tremendous trials and hurdles – that would have tested even the most committed of heroines.
Nancy generations is the first in her tribe to say no to FGM and other harmful impacts on women.
She is the first in countless generations to be faced with even a choice. Even in the West it was just 100 years ago that the Suffragettes campaigned and women in the 1960’s were perhaps the first generation to be truly able to consider seeking the personal fulfillment of their potential as an option! So we are at the start of an age where women are becoming empowered enough to contribute equally to the world, and with this there is hope. Outlined below are expenditure plans for how we will play our part in this revolution using your donation money.
The amount raised so far & spending plans!
We raised $11,419 (£7,523.24 after paying Generosity site fees) which is a tremendous boost and has made all the difference. However this is an epic project and it does takes time to build.
How your money will be spent!
We’ve raised just a part of the full amount so far, so we’ve cut our coat according to our cloth, which means I’m editing the story myself for the time being – using your donations to pay for some key steps forward.
- Access to archive clearances from the master of my first film.
- Website improvements
- Translations for all 104 tapes
- Back up drives for the project
- Camera servicing and video stock.
- Nancy’s group meeting.
- Social Media support
Next steps to pay for:
- Complete filming to cover Nancy’s current story.
- Edit doctors fee.
- Next stages of editing a rough cut to block out story (in progress)
- Finishing funds for worldwide music rights, subtitles, sound and technical completion and legal fees.
- Hire assistance feature doc editor.
- Hire assistance with marketing, publicity and distribution funding.
- Screening the film in key capitals where FGM is practiced. Including a Kenya premier.
- Distribution & Impact campaign strategist.
Future outreach and impact intentions:
- Edit two versions – a field version & a more multi-layered cut for western audiences.
- Ensure Nancy can use the film in the field to inspire change in remote communities during the cutting season providing funding, professional support and guidance.
- Distribute the film widely in communities globally where women and girls can be inspired by Nancys story.
Whilst I am working on the feature length versions, my hope is that the short versions of Nancy’s story can be screened in schools in the UK to open discussion on eliminating violence and abuse against women, as well as encouraging self empowerment.
Herzog’s & Coppola’s experience is like the North Star guiding film makers like myself !
Herzog said in his inimitable style ‘ You must be prepared to descend into Hell itself and wrestle the film out of the claws of the devil himself!’
I can identify with the sentiment as well as the huge commitment it takes..but however hard, it is nothing like the unspeakable agony the women in Pokot suffer without even the chance to speak of their pain for fear of being cast out. So it is a privilege to be sharing their journey of transformation and recording it and for it to be shared to help others.
It is Nancy’s vision which is the creative soil from which this film has grown but the seed she planted has been fertilized with my sweat and tears too and I hope some of our passion will seep into the very bones of the story and nourish it’s potential, for there is something transmitted in a story that can only comes from this depth of connection.
My invitation to you!
Please invite others to join the circle of ‘Nancy’s Friends’ and share this amazing journey for I believe we are witnessing an extraordinary evolutionary awakening around the world and you and I are just a part of this through our participation in Nancy’s story.
I believe profoundly that the desire welling up within the girls depicted within Nancy’s story is just part of a rising evolutionary impulse felt across the world by men and women everywhere. It can – with your support – become an unstoppable force to end centuries of suffering.
Women around the world are echoing this desire and I believe that if we all play our part – giving to others in whichever way we can, however large or small, we will create a better future for the generations after us and enrich our own lives immeasurably at the same time.
Worldwide women are awaking to this impulse to find their voices, it seems to be the evolutionary mood of the 21st Century in the developed world, yet in developing countries it is a life or death issue. Gender inequality is linked to low levels of development and many other markers of poverty, and so at the very least, empowering women helps improve lives for not only the individual but her family, the whole community and even the tribe or nation too.
Surely as a movement supporting the empowerment of women we can achieve Nancy’s dream to help her end FGM in her tribe? How wonderful would that be to know we’d been a key part of that! Please take whatever action you are inspired to and thank you for sharing our belief in the power of documentary storytelling to change lives and inspire women to empower themselves! We truly appreciate your support.
Nancy’s story as told by her
Nancy A One Girl Revolution  Facebook
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