10 Year Anniversary

I really couldn’t summarise my experience at Gender Links in a paragraph – it would be injustice, but I will try. Working at GL was my very first internship experience and it was nothing short of a blessing. From day one I was never treated like your typical intern but more like an equal employee.

“As a media student I never used to think or see anything wrong with media until I did the media literacy course with Gender Links. I did not know how to use a map book. After the course I was able to design and publish training and pamphlets. Through the IT training I learnt how to use the computer, photoshop, internet and designing brochures. Training helps to form part of the socials network forum. I could log on cyber dialogues and communicate with others on the internet.” – Sikhonzile Ndlovu, Gender and Media Manager, talking to GL external evaluator Sandra Ayoo.

When the project started in 2005 I had high expectations on the impact MAP was going to make in raising awareness on the role played by the media to sensitize […]

The year 2010 put Africa on the global map with the Soccer World Cup coming to South Africa. It also made me travel a journey that continues and whose impact […]

Yes, women are like tea bags, they only realise their true strength when they are put in hot water! A friend of mine reminded me early this year that this […]

I got to know Gender Links and media literacy through a colleague at an NGO I used to work with, he encouraged me as part of empowering me as I […]

Sinking or swimming? Being thrown in the deep end is a fast way to learn! Towards the end of 2010 GL promoted me to manage the Alliance and Partnerships portfolio. […]

In early 2009, when I was invited to attend a GL workshop on GBV, I was given the full workshop package with some documents to read and that was an […]

The first article I wrote for the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service was as a wide-eyed 22-year-old university student doing a year-long internship with a Zimbabwean AIDS service organisation.

I am not a professional climber, literally or figuratively. But, growing up in the mystical highlands of southeast Zimbabwe, I have had an enduring love affair with mountains. There is so much about climbing that is a metaphor for life itself.

Header rows repeat, please Danny.
Please use header rows repeat.
DANNY – I insist on header rows repeat!
But what did it mean? What was header rows repeat?

It was the question foremost on my mind in my first two months at Gender Links. What exactly did Colleen mean when she stated that three-worded request in cryptic emails?

There are many degree programmes out there and they surely can teach us a lot but no degree can equip one with the practical “on- the- job- learning” that is fundamental to every working human being’s existence. No place can better equip one with institutional systems as Gender Links. Once one has been Gender Linked, a great amount of self discipline follows.