Katherine-Journal Entry- October 22. 2020

During this quarantine, I have had a lot of time to think and reflect on how I can help make this world become a better place. I have watched the news on television and social media and they were shocking. I was able to observe the way in which violence in my country increases constantly. There have been multiple cases of femicides, not only in Costa Rica but in other Latin American countries as well, due to the quarantine these cases have increased dramatically. This is why as an IB student and as a woman I decided to take action and not be part of the people who keep silent waiting for a change. CAS has changed my perception of life, now I know I can always be part of the solution and that I should stand up for myself and for my community, in order to make this world a better place for the following generations. I decided to create an instagram account that would be incharge of educating people around my community and bring awareness about this social problem. I became a risk taker by talking and sharing information about this controversial issue (femicides). Through this account I'm able to inform people about gender violence and the consequences it can have having a toxic relationship. The account is called “eduquemonosjuntoscr” and I decided to form a group with some of my classmates to keep this page functioning every day, we were able to divide the days in which each of us will publish content on the page. Social media is a very strong tool and we need to inform ourselves before posting something in order to respect all opinions and be inclusive with everyone. Our main goal with this page is to inform our society around us and persuade them in order to fight all together against gender violence and femicides. Through this account I pretend to bring a change to my community by informing and educating people. It is important to start with education since a lot of people in our community do not receive the proper education and are exposed to suffer some sort of violence without even noticing. I would like after this quarantine passes to create educational campaigns in schools where we can teach little kids respect and inform them about gender violence and how we can ask for help or prevent this issue from happening with our actions. In the same way I would like to organize a strike on behalf of all the victims from femicides in our country. Due to coronavirus doing this activity is not possible for the moment but I would like to plan and be able to communicate this message of love and respect. In conclusion my experience in CAS has taught me a completely new perspective of how I perceive the problems in my community. I started by putting attention to details of how my community and country are being affected by social problems, then I decided to take action and start by doing simple things to help fight against these problems. Gender violence is a social problem that is affecting not only my daily life but also all the women's life in the world, it starts from “simple sexist compliments” on the street, to horrible murders and sexual violations to all types of women, from childhood to adulthood. And we can not and will not let this problem continue to occur.