Across the world, many millions of girls and women are denied a safe learning environment. Alumna Ziallo Gogui  (BA Spanish with Business, 2010) was sufficiently concerned about this scandal that she is currently in training to climb Mount Kilimanjaro for Plan UK. We asked what inspired her.

I have always felt strongly about girls’ rights and our place in society. In my final year at Hull I took a module in Social sciences called Women and Politics because I wanted to know about the women who took a bold stance for our rights in modern history. My end of year dissertation was on the impact of political turmoil on women in Latin America with a focus on Chile and Argentina.

There was also an incident during my final year when I was having a hard time that stuck with me all these years. A Korean male student told me I should feel lucky that I was studying abroad because not all girls got that chance. His parents chose to send him instead of his sister because they would rather invest in their boy rather than the girl.

The cause is important to me because I am a woman from a developing country where growing up, I have witnessed prejudice towards women that shocked me from an early age. I also come from a large family and I have 6 sisters. At no point our parents made us feel that we deserved less from life. We were encouraged and given the same opportunities as the boys but out in society things don’t work out that way. I want to see it change and that is why I am campaigning.

Plan UK, the charity, are the experts on girls’ rights and Because I am a Girl is their flagship campaign. They have already helped 58 million girls and by 2016, they aim to support hundreds of millions more so that they will be free from violence and can get the education, skills and support they need to become powerful forces for change in their communities.

The date for the trip to Tanzania is the 17^th June 2016. It’s a 10 day trip so I will be back on June 26^th. I have been training since January this year: running in the mornings, walking 8km home from work twice a week, Yoga, going up in the hills of Boxhill to keep fit and stay long on my feet but I haven’t been out camping in altitude yet.

I am still in contact with other alumni and some of them have kindly donated to the project.

Support me at www.justgiving.com/Ziallo-Gogui

Read me at www.plankilimanjaro.wordpress.com

I’ll be thrilled to hear from other alumni who would want to help!

Zia Gogui (BA Spanish with Business, 2010)