Written and produced by Hannah Carew.
Hannah is from Makeni, Sierra Leone - a vegetable farmer and a mentor running a personal and professional safe space for girls whose parents are living with disability. She is passionate about her work with disabled girls and has adopted a 13-year-old girl from her group. She has been telling stories through poems about the effect of teenage pregnancy on girls and is passionate about inclusivity. Most of her poems reflect her story and the stories of girls, and since she joined the Purposeful Circles of Us fellowship programme, she has been able to nurture and improve her storytelling skills through poems and photography.
“My story is about a 12-year-old girl by the name of Isha, who has been parentified because of the blindness of her family members. She is the only one who takes care of her parents. Despite her care, people in the community discriminate against her because of her own partial blindness and the blindness of her family. She can’t mingle with her friends and is unable to go to school frequently. This has led her to be traumatised.
I chose to tell this story because as a mentor, I want to stand firm and change Isha’s environment, and to enable Isha to evaluate her experiences and change her mindset by looking at them from different perspectives. I hope this story also gives a warning or wake up call to people who always discriminate against girls that are undergoing this same struggle.”