I’m from Brazil and came to Kamloops in November 2016 as a postgraduate student in International Business. After a few semesters, I had to put my studies on hold, but I always felt that I would return. In 2023, with my studies always on my mind, I began researching the TRU website. The Master’s program in Human Rights and Social Justice caught my attention, and when I started reading about the program, tears welled up in my eyes, and I realized this was the right path to follow.
I have a degree in Business and have worked in the sector for over 20 years, but since childhood, consciously or unconsciously, I have always sought justice. Seeing people, especially children, go hungry, face the cold, be rejected, and be thrown into the world hurt me deeply, but one injustice that has always consumed my soul is gender-based violence. Being a woman in a patriarchal world is not easy, much less in a country with a highly sexist culture. The simple act of walking down the street to school, work, or simply to the bakery always made me anxious, wondering if some man would harass me with obscene words and gestures. But it was when I discovered, at a very young age, physical and psychological abuse within my own family that I began to question how this could happen silently, without any adult noticing or doing anything about it.
Gender-based violence is not just a specific act, but a sequence of events that are naturalized within a colonized, patriarchal, and culturally sexist society. There are sexist words, gestures, and actions that create discomfort, fear, and insecurity, forms of violence that must be challenged and eradicated. But what has always bothered me the most is the silence of people who have decided and continue to choose not to get involved. Violence is perpetuated because people, for countless reasons, remain silent, thus strengthening the oppressor. Silence feeds injustice. “Remember: doing little or nothing in the face of injustice, harm, or wrongs doesn’t mean things stay the same; it means things are getting worse, and your action (inaction) can be or is a part of that worsening” (Wilson-Raybould, 2024, p. 22).
This is my life goal: to break the silence, to help women who, out of fear, low self-esteem, or social insecurity, find the strength to change their stories. To welcome and validate their life experiences in a sphere where they can have opportunities for personal and professional growth.
“I can’t save the world, but I can save someone’s world.” (Anonymous)
Reference
Wilson-Raybould, J. (2024). True Reconciliation: How to Be a Force for Change (Paperback edition). McClelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited.