Prince George is home to only a few international aid agencies. A new one joins the non-governmental organization (NGO) family tonight.
The name of the organization is Our Satya. It has been quietly getting up and running for about a year, and tonight a documentary will be screened that unveils exactly what this locally invented NGO plans to do. The film is called Her Voice and will include, live and in person, the voice of founder Shobha Sharma.
Sharma has, for the past 15 years, been heavily involved in professional NGO work in India, Kenya, Pakistan, Mexico and also Canada. She has worked with operations like Save The Children and Me To We, but when she had a child of her own she felt the time was right to transform her years of frontline field work into her own agency. That way, being rooted back in Prince George, raising her own family, did not mean she couldn't still use her unique skill-set.
Sharma explained that Our Satya would be focused on the needs she saw as especially dire in developing nations. It would raise funds, resources and human hands "to improve the health and well-being of women and infants within impoverished conditions around the world," she said.
Helping those causes also triggers cascading benefits throughout a community, she said, so it had both direct benefits to women and children but also radiant benefits to entire regions.
"Our Satya is based out of Prince George, and is built on the passion of volunteers and supporters that are residents of Prince George," she said, explaining how it was possible to act local but have positive impacts far away.
"I'm a girl from P.G. My world view is governed by who I was growing up here and being shaped by this community," she said. "With the support of our northern community, we are reaching across the globe to empower women to respond to their reality through programming around education, equality and medical outreach."
The evolution of Our Satya as an agency will build its own habits and operating systems. That, she said, will also help local causes. Creating human capacity, social infrastructure and a local base of experiences would inevitably lead to vulnerable parts of our own area getting help more easily, and other agencies having organizational talent closer at hand.
"Through this documentary, Our Satya hopes to raise awareness, inspire the need for change, and urge action," Sharma said.
The documentary was made
by filmmaker Saurabh Vyas
who went on location to communities in rural India to gather the words and images that would tell the story behind Our Satya's cause.
Proceeds from this event will go toward the three development pillars of Our Satya: education, equality and medical outreach.
Education programming on reproductive health, child planning and early marriages;
Combating gender inequities and caste discrimination;
Medical outreach projects that will provide access to the basic necessities of water and sanitation to combat water born illness and the spread of epidemics;
Primary care outreach through the training of Dai Mas (birth assistants) for women and infants in remote locations in both in Rajasthan and Ladakh.
The global premiere of Her Voice happens tonight at 7 p.m. at UNBC's Canfor Theatre. Tickets are $20, available at Books & Company or at the door.
For more information on the upstart NGO and the film, log onto www.oursatya.org or email [email protected].
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