Let's Talk Human Rights

By Tierra Freeman

Escape
/uh·skayp/ noun
an act of breaking free from confinement or control

The WomHub is a community of like-minded women who are committed to supporting one another’s success. This vision began when their two founders, Hemma and Naadiya, both engineers, found each other in the classroom and noticed that while they looked the same, they were the only women inhabiting the space. Upon questioning why there weren't more women in this incubator space, they founded WomENG and focused on how they would ignite women’s interest in STEM. At the Hub, STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, mining, and manufacturing. In working to ignite these interests and instill these careers in females, the company looked at early talent development in women and girls to support their journeys into STEM careers. From here, the company only continued to grow and eventually formed the WomHub, which looks after their female founders and runs programs that focus on incubators and accelerators that support women at market, i.e., women in engineering, mining, green technology, and circular economy. This space is designed to foster collaboration and networking. 

My fellowship at the WomHub propelled me into the world of mar/comm, which focuses on marketing and community. My objective while here was to look at moving the company's online marketing and social media presence from a reactive strategy to one that is planned and runs along the cadence of the programs in both their talent and entrepreneurship verticals. The goal was to move towards learning objectives and thought leadership pieces to drive a stronghold in the ecosystem as the leaders in the coworking space that we are. To do this, I put together content pieces that focused on showing off our space as well as the programs we offer, in addition to writing an article about women in mining. I came up with ways to highlight and bring awareness to programs before they happened in hopes of giving our consumers exciting things to look forward to and bring forth more engagement and interaction on our socials. Lastly, I became all things media, helping to set up and prepare for events and then going around to gather footage and images to retell the stories of the night, in between networking and meeting lovely people, of course. 

One of the events that I helped set up and put on was called “Women Who Build Africa”. While this event was hosted by our company, there were actually two other companies putting on the event itself in our coworking space. These companies were Stitch/Airbnb and Jem, which were represented by their female partners and co-founders. While here, these women talked about certain goals they had for their companies, tactics they used to get involvement and help their customers grow, as well as discussed the similar motives and goals that they shared with the WomHub. These goals included things like creating space for women working in the tech field/space to come together, network, learn together and share experiences. While there, not only was I able to meet and network with amazing women, but I also got insider knowledge on what it takes to have an idea and turn it into a business/company that can eventually earn profits. I learned helpful information that I would have never thought of as well as how to operate and manage a business. Many things that had to do with the hiring process itself as far as creating an effective team and what resources to use when looking for new hires as well as how to make sure your team can work together. 

While I enjoyed my work here and could finally think about my next steps as far as my career, there was something else happening in the background that I couldn't quite see formulating until it was right in my face. I was beginning to realize my place in the world. My view of the world was changing in real time, right before my eyes and as things became much clearer, I realized that I would need to change how I interacted with this world if I wanted to have any chance at making a difference.

This summer, those traveling abroad through the HRC read the book, All Rise: Resistance and Rebellion in South Africa. This book shares six stories of the long-forgotten struggles of ordinary, working-class women and men. From immigrants and miners to tram workers and washerwomen, these activists and allies risked their lives to bring about positive change for future generations. While reading the book, I found many things surprising about the history of South Africa and how human rights played into many of the challenges they faced. From the treatment of immigrant people when trying to better their lives and find work to the harsh realities of the black and brown people who could do nothing but watch as their country was divided more as people were forced to live and develop separately. These people were all written off and treated as though their lives meant nothing. This shocked me because in America, at least in my experience, we aren’t taught as much about the development of other countries considering we have so much of our own history we are still fighting to be able to teach. Before traveling to South Africa, I was under the assumption that this was a place where black people were encouraged to thrive. I was so sure that this was a place for people who looked like me to be fully accepted and that wasn’t always the case. However, what was especially cool about my travels were the people I met and what they were able to teach me. A friend I met through work and eventually got very close with would take me around to beautiful places like the beach, the mountains, a lookout and even on a walk around where I lived and showed me all of the cool things surrounding me that I could do. It was during this walk that I began to realize that I was at the center of where a few of the events in the book we were reading took place. In fact, I ended up discovering that I was living across the street from the very courts many of the people in these stories had to fight for their rights in. This allowed me to further resonate and connect with the people in these stories and pushed me to want to find out more about the country and its inhabitants.

This trip/research was fully funded through the Daniel J. Curran and Claire M. Renzetti Scholarship Fund for International Studies.

Tierra Freeman is a senior majoring in Business Marketing and minoring in Race and Social Justice. She is from Englewood Ohio and is involved in a multitude of clubs and organizations at the University of Dayton. This involvement includes but is not limited to, being the president of SAGE (Students Advocating for Gender Equity), a MECPro leader, an event coordinator of BATU, a University of Dayton cheerleader, an intern at the Chamber of Commerce in Vandalia, a Diversity Peer Educator, and a Woman of Remarkable Distinction. Post-grad, Tierra plans to begin making her mark in the world by pursuing a career in content creation/social media marketing as well as dive into the practice of social work, where she plans to help families and communities while promoting social change.