Robert Chiwamba to chair judges panel in girls poetry contest
surpassed our expectations
Poet Robert Chiwamba is expected to lead a panel of judges that is expected to scrutinise entries and come up with the winners in the Plan Malawi poetry competition for girls.
Chiwamba leads the panel which also has Chawanangwa Nyirenda and Murhenderhe Dula.
The three judges will screen the entries and come up with nine winners, three in each category of groups 10 -14, 15- 19 and 20-24 years old.
Chiwamba, who has just returned from Sweden where he was invited to perform during Unesco’s ninth Media, Information and Literacy Feature events hailed Plan Malawi for introducing the competition.
“This is one way of empowering girls to speak out on some of the challenges they face and giving them a chance to showcase their art,” Chiwamba said.
He said he was happy that as a big fan of the organisation, Plan Malawi has chosen to use poetry as a medium of communication in one of the issues they are advocating for.
Meanwhile, Plan Malawi has said it is overwhelmed with the number of entries its ‘rewrite her story’ poetry competition for girls has registered.
The competition is aimed at highlighting personal reflections on how girls are represented in digital and print media, and demand for change.
“The number of entries has incredibly surpassed our expectations and it is exciting to capture the tendencies of unequal representation of girls in the media. You see, these are touching personal reflections that young girls are expressing poetically,” Plan Malawi Communication and Campaigns Manager, Rogers Siula, said.
The competition will see K675,000 worth of prizes up for grabs with the winners in each category receiving K100,000 each.
According to Siula, the ‘rewrite her story’ competition seeks to demand the media, film makers and advertising agencies, among others, to stop the sexualisation and objectification of females.
“In our latest research into the world’s popular films, women and girls are rarely represented as leaders or when given leadership roles, they are far more likely than men to be portrayed as sex objects,” Siula said.
Siula also said that the winners of the poetry competition are expected to perform at Bingu International Convention Centre on October 9 2019 when Plan International will champion the commemoration of the International Day of a Girl with a focus on the equal representation which is one of the key demands for #GirlsGetEqual global campaign.
