Mentoring makes the day

Considering the importance of role models in the lives of young people, the Royal Danish Embassy in Bangladesh yesterday celebrated the UN International Women's Day (IWD) in a different way.

Danish Ambassador to Bangladesh Hanne Fugl Eskjær shared her professional world with a young Bangladeshi student Talbia Tanvir, the shadow ambassador of Denmark for a day.

Talbia, a 23-year-old economics student of North South University, was selected from 200 applicants of the Shadow Ambassador Competition at the Danish Embassy's Facebook page at the beginning of this month. 

Sharing their joint experience, Hanne and Talbia spoke to media about the need for women to believe in themselves and feel that they too can reach their fullest capacity just like their male counterparts.

"Women role models are very important," said Hanne explaining why a young female was chosen.

"Many women around the world doubt whether they will be able to make a difference; whether they are good enough," she said, adding how she feels responsible as a female ambassador to be a role model and induce confidence.

She said that despite the presence of many strong women business leaders and politicians, women in Bangladesh often doubt their capabilities.

Watching Hanne at work Talbia also felt the need to spread a positive message about women's inner potential among peers.

"Despite living in such a wonderful country where most of the time the leaders of the nation has been women," said Talbia, "women are facing crisis at so many levels whether it is social security or physical safety."

"So I thought I can make a difference by participating in it (the competition), and will try to bring in more positive changes," she said.

Talbia started her shadow ambassador task at 8:45am yesterday after getting introduced to the embassy personnel, attending meetings and learning about Bangladesh-Denmark relationship.

"The message every women should spread is that there is no need to be scared of what the world or others think," she said.

Everyone should be free to choose and follow their dreams, irrespective of their genders, she added. Talbia, till date, undecided about her career, felt inspired by Hanne and was seriously considering the challenging life of a diplomat.

"If you manage to open a door for a person then life can change," said Hanne, stressing on reaching out a helping hand to people to realise their full potentials.

She said that the shadow ambassador concept is a concrete way of empowering a concrete woman. A number of other embassies in Dhaka including the American, Dutch, Norwegian and Brazilian are expected to appoint their own shadow ambassadors during the month of March, she added.  

"We want to celebrate women who have something to offer and can make a difference in other women's lives and also want to mark that there are still a lot of challenges to be addressed," said Hanne.

She said societies prosper when full potentials of men and women are unlocked. Successful businesses have people from diverse backgrounds in senior managements, which provide better results.

Hanne said despite progress, women's rights continue to be one of the challenges for Bangladesh and the biggest among those is violence against women. Hanne also stressed the need for creating a safe space for women.

Hanne informed how Danish Embassy worked with the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs in setting up One-stop Crisis Centres and about Danish Embassy's project in the agricultural and infrastructure building sectors where both men and women are given training on agricultural matters and women workers are involved in building roads.