By Servane Mouazan, CEO, Ogunte
Our #1MillionImpactWomen campaign this week is all about being bold and making yourself visible - it is hard to maintain these traits, nobody feels confident all the time - but they are essential to amplifying our impact.
I would like to talk to you about “showing up” and how you can demonstrate boldness and visibility. Let me use my favourite allegory.
Yoichiro Tsuda from Japan, one of the most prominent slime moulds specialists in the world explained to me one day:
“The slime mould - has the capacity to "remember” the obstacles that stressed it, and goes beyond its normal behaviour to avoid these obstacles in the future. For instance: slime moulds normally dislike salts, when there is an area that contains salt, the slime mould carefully avoids it. However, in some cases, after they have explored all the safe areas (and found out that there’s no way out), some slime moulds have the courage to move towards the salty area and eventually migrates to the other side of the wall, where it’s safe. It’s a bit of an anthropomorphic description, but only some brave and courageous slime moulds can do it.”
When I originally wrote about slime mould and women social entrepreneurs, it was only two weeks after Malala Yousafzai, from Pakistan, had been shot at, simply because she had had the courage to push girls and women to get educated. “I don’t mind if I have to sit on the floor at school. All I want is education. And I’m afraid of no one.”
Can you find the bold maverick inside and let It talk, for once? Imagine if you had 200% more positive courage than you usually have, what type of ‘salty area’ would it enable you to cross? Who would see you then?
We’ve created map.ogunte.com where you can ‘pin’ your details and make yourself visible to your sister women social entrepreneurs. Who will you meet to help you amplify your impact?
If you haven’t joined yet, please do it now - take this opportunity to be part of a future building movement of women social entrepreneurs or #1MillionImpactWomen.
Explore Ogunte’s #1MillionImpactWomen campaign.