Personal Narrative: My Work As An Activist

Course: New Media Writing/Publishing

My work as an activist involves advocacy, research and implementation of community projects that are targeted towards the groups I advocate for, who are: Women, the youth, children and minority groups that are marginalized. Most of the work I do among these groups are informed by research and active involvement in groups that already exist in the community or ones that I have founded myself. The issues I am mostly involved in are for women, the improvement of their status relative to men; for children and the youth, it is education, community involvement, leadership, responsible citizenship and relations between men and women. To deliver to these groups, I do a lot of writing which is both fiction and non-fiction.

My fiction, like non-fiction is based on current issues and derived from real life tales and stories that most of these people can identify with and find guidance, help resolve their problems, get information or answers to their questions.

My work whether presented as articles on blogs, novels, newspaper features, in newsletters or social network, seek to do one or all of the above. One of my long stories Almost There is based on the genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1993. It took me about a year back in 1998 to write the story based on the information I had, but it to took me since then until now to put into it adequate information because in those years it was very difficult for me to get all the information I needed to write an authentic story. The story is targeted towards women involved in conflict and living in war zones. It is about two women from the two warring tribes in Rwanda. These women find themselves caught up in a war they did not know was about to erupt and in circumstances in which they are totally helpless. Because they have been friends since childhood, the anger and hatred stirred by the genocide is kept at bay while they choose to survive. Depending on each other, they walk out of the war, not unscathed but determined to change their country, its politics and relationships between men and women with regards to conflict and social life in

Rwanda.
Coming To America is a story about the daughter of African immigrants who have settled in America. Pressed for new ideas and things to do after obtaining a Master of Fiction and Art, she returns to Zambia with only $500 in her wallet. Natasha, the main character of the story was born in Zambia and left the country when she was eight. She returns home at the advice of her family to find a niche in a country she is told must still have a lot of opportunities for those who will look for them. She is surprised and disturbed by what she finds but is determined to stay and eek out a living from what is available to her to see if she could succeed. Not only does she succeed, but her success on the African continent brings her success back in America. This is a story about education, employment and the economy. It is both inspirational and eye opening.
My other stories are children’s stories to encourage them to be adventurous, to learn honesty, hard work and to be enterprising; these stories are set in Africa.
Most of my nonfiction content is found online in blog articles, social network posts, notes, promotional pages and groups where people interact with one another daily. On these podiums and in some anthologies or magazines, I have had my poetry published. I write spiritual content about prayer, the Bible and the church, about my spiritual life and experiences too.
Expertise and Endorsements

Goals
My writing goals are to help people live more enriching lives by advocating for their freedoms, rights, liberties and giving voice to their needs. I write to inspire, build, bring change and reform. I hope that through my writings, people will learn not only why but how to respect one another, listen better, believe and acknowledge that our world will only be a better place if we all give and receive enrichment.
Audience
I have struggled to find my place in the American market, to cater to the needs of the American audience and I will continue to aspire for that, but I just realized that, my role may be that of a bridger. That the people I write about will not necessarily be the main consumers of the content I share, but that it will be a source of education, information, touching point and may be even entertainment to many young people in America. Young people in universities, colleges and high schools now who are looking to widen their perspectives about Africa, its history, present and future. I am writing for the young African minds in universities and Africa’s mostly youthful population that is maturing and will be taking on the reins of leadership within the next decade or so. This audience which is excited about the internet right now but lacks the means to exploit the internet fully, are already proving to be steady consumers of what I have to give. Along with them, are the young people in American institutions that are open minded, less prejudiced and eager to take up challenges outside their comfort zones which would have made their parents wince.
I have met these young people on facebook, in meetings at Toastmasters, in universities where I went to speak, in churches and my neighborhood. Through my writing platforms on facebook, when I began to do target writing i.e. I shared a story from my page with an audience of young people looking for advice about employment, relationships and other things in general, on a forum moderated by a friend who is also an activist. He shared my post on his profile. That one post directed traffic in the hundreds towards my page which had only grown up to a membership of 477 in two years. By the time I noticed the spiking traffic, close to a thousand had joined and kept coming. I took advantage of the spike and invested money into targeting my audience on facebook and they number in hundreds of thousands. Within a week, my audience grew from 477 to almost 7000 now. My posts, stories and topics have so far been read more than ten thousand times. Overall on weekly statistics, I have been reaching over 50,000 readers and the numbers keep growing.
These new people who are mostly young, are hungry for information, for ideas. They need help to establish their lives, their future and indeed about education. My posts have been shared over and over again. I have always written content that was well researched and which I was passionate about, I did not envision that a day would come when people would appreciate it so much.
A few weeks ago in class when I was reading Sambuchino’s Creating Platform, he talked about presenting our work to publishers, that having an audience of 20 000 could attract a publisher or agent. I wondered what it took to get such an audience and how to build it. Of course I took to heart some of his good advice about creating platform through our existing contacts. I have created countless contacts over the years, what I lacked was the creativity in engaging them in what I was doing. I learned and applied some of his principles, and indeed, having 20 000 readers is no longer a farfetched dream to me, it is a very viable possibility that I will exploit beyond my dreams.
My Channels
I do my writing on various podiums and each one of them represents a different aspect of my writing. On Hubpages which is a content site geared to provide information that online readers are looking for, I started out writing about my prayer, ministry and spiritual experiences. I decided to continue to use it for that purpose because some of my most read articles online are in that category. However, to go more in line with what Hubpages expects, I will be writing on there about wellness issues and sharing how products I now distribute for business work in our bodies. I would like to write more about healthy living there. I also want to use hubpages for biographies of influential and inspirational people, but especially women. I have an one such article there which is most sought after on Pinterest and highly read on Hubpages.
My blogger account is dedicated to my activism. On blogger, I share my final school papers and I realize that they are some of the most sought after and highly read documents, because they are posted just the way they are submitted in school with citations and the added beauty of sharing pictures and captions. Blogger is also where I write about education, share researched information and disseminate documents written in social science jargon, in a way that laypeople are able to understand and identify with. This is also the podium where I am sharing interviews on the activism of others, their aspirations and achievements. In other words, I am creating on blogger, a platform with information to inform the future. It is highly read even if I still only have one follower.
On Wordpress, I created a platform to share things that are more personal but inspirational.

There I share with Americans things that some never know are happening in this country. I share the details of the lives of immigrants, the struggles and the high hopes and possibilities of achieving them. On this blog, I talk about the American dream. The dream many now do not think exists and that it is denied certain people. I write about it to share my struggles and leave a trail of whether, how or if that dream is attainable. This is almost like a diary. It is replicated on tumbler, a podium which I believe is mostly for

sharing.
On facebook, I have the most platforms and these target people that I can see and interact with. They are the ones with whom I share other details which relate all of my writing. Facebook represents all of these other platforms and I am just learning that if I am consistent, passionate and give people what they need or desire, they will come for it. That is what I will continue to do. I am currently concentrating on building my facebook audiences and will use the means Facebook has created to target and reach that audience. It means creating worthy content and also spending money to bring it to the people and also creating networks that will help in this area.