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Inspiring
the girl child - Interview with Tafara Mbaya, Drake and Garcia
Upenyu
Makoni-Muchemwa, Kubatana.net
March 22, 2012
View audio file details
Taking action
in this year's International Women's Day Celebrations,
themed, Connect Girls Inspire Women, social marketing company Drake
and Garcia is organizing a campaign that will inspire the Zimbabwean
girl child to believe in her capacity to create opportunities and
lead to social change. On the 22nd of May 2012 the public will be
asked to take a girl in Form 4, 5 or 6 to work so that she can be
exposed to different kinds of jobs, on the other hand companies
will be asked to twin with a school in an under privileged area.
Source: Drake and Garcia
What
is Drake and Garcia?
Drake and Garcia is a social marketing company that uses commercial
marketing tools for social impact and change. This is a group of
people who had mostly worked in film and marketing. It started when
we were doing something on anti-piracy and we found that a lot of
marketing was done for commercial things. But things that needed
social change there is not much marketing. People who work in that
field have a lot of money but they don't use the same marketing
tools to get people's attention. So we thought why don't
we use commercial tactics.
What
is your guiding philosophy as a company?
We believe that a lot of things are done for us by foreigners, so
we thought why we don't tell our own stories.
Listen
What
caused you to conceptualise the Take a Girl to Work campaign?
When we were planning Woman of the Year and during a discussion
with the Ministry of Women's Affairs, we found that they were
doing a census of women in top management positions...did you know
that in organisations like the air force for instance the first
woman is ranked fourth from the top. There are women in top positions
but their numbers are very, very small. So we decided we wanted
to do something about it and we came up with Take a Girl to Work
day. It's not unique to Zimbabwe, it's been done in
South Africa, the UK . . . it's almost everywhere, and it
has been seen to help. For example, there's a girl in Bikita,
the women that she looks up to are teachers and nurses, so she decided
that this is what she wants to become when she grows up. Imagine
if, for one day, she flies from here to Joburg in the pilot's
cockpit. What it does for her. All the possibilities. I mean even
before she gets onto the plane she will have seen a lot of women
doing different things. So that's what we're trying
to do.
Listen
Who
are you targeting with the campaign?
It would be good to have as many girls as possible, but since it's
the first time we're targeting mainly lower sixth students,
and upper sixes because they are deciding what they want to do with
their lives. We are also targeting Form 4s. Mainly this is in urban,
semi urban and mine areas. Some companies have expressed an interest
in having girls from the rural areas. Because it's a pilot
it's easier to deal with schools in urban areas. There are
still disadvantaged schools in an urban setting, but we have selected
a few rural schools where the companies will send a bus for them
to come.
Listen
How
will the campaign work?
Companies will register and select a school that they want to work
with. They will select 10 girls from a certain school that they
will take for the whole day. Before the girls come they will write
essays about what they want to do in life and, given the opportunity,
where they'd want to go. These 10 will get paired with a company,
they will come in the morning and we will have role models, women
in top management, maybe the CEOs who will talk to them. This way
the girls get exposed to as many jobs as possible. They will also
get a package, which will contain a career guidance booklet and
other gifts from the company. We hope it won't end there,
but there will be an internship that they can do with the companies
during holidays and possibly even get sponsorship for university
etc. For individuals they can take their kids, or other girls to
schools.
What
is your long-term vision for this campaign?
We want it to go national; we want every single girl in that age
group to have access to at least one event. We hope that in five
years time we will have achieved that. Where it has been done all
over the world early pregnancies are reduced, grades go up. It is
also seen that there are more women as pilots and scientists. We
hope that we can improve a great deal in the number of women who
take jobs that have small proportions of women.
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