Episode Forty-Five: The Byte-Jensine Larson

Social entrepreneur and international journalist Jensine Larson founded World Pulse -an online platform dedicated to connecting women and children across the globe-hear how, in the middle of the Amazon, this miracle idea came to her.

Transcript

I just knew I had to go forward and create,

Like the vision was as strong as ever,

But it was gonna take a different form,

But I really didn't know what that was.

And I didn't know how to do it again.

I had to relearn everything.

And I just remember those dark nights of the soul where I had no salary.

I had no team anymore.

I had lost the board.

I was like,

I'd lost everything.

And I had to recreate again after a very grueling three years.

One of the biggest life-changing miracle moments for me was when I was 19 years old and the vision of World Pulse was given to me.

I actually had become a journalist.

I had gone to the Amazon jungle.

And at 19 and decided that I wanted to be out in the world and listen to women's voices.

I felt very isolated in rural Wisconsin.

And I met incredible women who were telling me to take their stories to the world because their children were dying of various cancers because of the oil contamination in their traditional lands.

And the more I listened to them,

The more I realized I wanted to be a writer.

I wanted to be a journalist.

From there,

I went to the Burma-Thai border,

Which is also known as Myanmar today.

And I was working with women refugees who were fleeing ethnic cleansing.

And they had endured mass rape,

Family members being killed in front of them,

The worst that you could ever imagine.

And I had been interviewing them and they were saying the same things to me,

Please carry our stories.

And it was clear that they had so much hope in their eyes that the world could hear them through me potentially.

I mean,

There was no doubt that if these women were ruling the land,

All the problems would be solved in terms of military dictatorship.

There was no doubt,

But it was incredibly painful to hear.

So one night I came back from interviews and I just couldn't sleep.

I was lying on a bamboo mat.

It was a very hot,

Sticky night and I was tossing and turning.

I was under the stars and I was just feeling so hopeless.

I could publish these stories,

But who's gonna listen?

Who's really gonna care about these women in Burma?

People don't even know where this is.

And as I was feeling that very deeply,

The stars spoke to me.

You know how people talk about a lightning bolt striking?

Well,

For me,

It was like this pulsing of the stars and the blue light,

As I looked at it,

Each star grew bigger and pulsed in the shape of a globe.

And I knew that what I was looking at was the unlocking of individual women's voices.

And as one unlocked,

It triggered another and it grew this building pulse around the planet.

And it grew bigger until it was just covered in this beautiful healing blue light.

And I said to myself,

I've just been shown the way forward.

And it's not just voice,

But it's connected voice.

And I need to,

I can no longer just be a messenger for these extraordinary leaders and voices,

But the world actually needs a platform,

A communication source,

So that they can be their own messengers.

They can speak for themselves and connect to each other to a bigger force and not feel so alone.

I have a couple of favorites.

One of those is a young woman leader in Uganda,

In rural Uganda.

And we had known her on the community.

She had been a powerful storyteller telling about how she grew up with 10 other brothers and sisters and had to fight for food.

But somehow a visitor to her community saw her potential and enrolled her in school and paid for her education out of her other brothers and sisters.

And so she was fortunate to get a basic education and get access to the internet through that.

So she's telling the stories of all the challenges and of course the HIV and AIDS as well.

She lost almost all of her brothers,

Her seven brothers to HIV AIDS.

Well,

One day I got a ping on my phone,

Which said,

Please help,

Need help immediately.

And these come from time to time on World Pulse.

And she wrote that her last brother,

Surviving brother had just died of AIDS.

And because the family no longer had a male heir,

The village elders were going to come to her home and take away their land and their house the next day and put her mother,

Her sisters and all the other orphans that they had taken in,

Because of course they'd taken in all these orphans,

Were going to be displaced.

And it was just devastating.

So suddenly I checked back shortly and there's all these comments and posts coming in from around the world,

From women on the network saying,

Look,

We're here for you.

You don't have to back down.

Do you realize that in Uganda,

You actually have legal rights to the land as women?

And we'll come there and we'll take care of you and try this and try this.

And there was all this just flurry of energy and support.

So I wake up the next morning,

Because it's morning our time in the Pacific Northwest.

And she writes back that,

Thank you so much.

The village elders came.

My mother and I stood very proudly at the threshold of the door.

And we said to them,

We are not letting go of our land.

We know that we have legal rights to our land.

And if you try and take it away from us,

Women are going to come from airplanes all over the world.

And they're going to land here in our backyard and they're going to stand up for us.

So to make a long story short,

She was able to remain on her land.

She was able to become a force from educating other women in the community of their rights.

Then with that hope that she had,

She said,

I'm going to pay this forward.

And she decided that she wanted to start a program to get rural girls like her,

Who are getting married off at age 11 and get them into school.

So she started a program of matchmaking rural girls to mentors around the world for small educational stipend,

Couple hundred dollars a year,

Plus some online mentoring.

And she started this through World Pulse.

Well,

It grew and grew and grew and grew to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of girls.

And so many mentors and so many Zoom,

Happy birthday to my mentor.

And the mentors started flying truly to Uganda and also really bringing that part of the prophecy,

What she said true.

But then she started growing,

She started building school buildings,

She started building gardens and sustainable organic gardens.

She does beekeeping.

And now those girls,

Many of those girls are getting into college,

They're getting into medical school and they fundamentally changed the legacy and the lineage of their families and their communities through that education.

And this woman,

Her name is Beatrice and you can find her on World Pulse,

Beatrice Achianas.

She's a force and she continues to build.

And I swear to you,

If just the vision of this one woman,

I'm talking one woman and there are tens of thousands of women on World Pulse,

But just her vision if she was the ruler of the world,

We'd all be in a better place.

We'd all be in a better place if her vision came to life.

Thank you for listening to episode 45 of Bite-Sized Blessings,

Where I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing a very good friend,

Yancina Larson,

Founder of World Pulse,

Social entrepreneur,

International journalist and global women's rights expert.

I have so much gratitude to her for clearing space in her day to have this important and miraculous discussion.

And whether you choose to listen to our Bite-Sized offerings for that five to 10 minutes of freedom in your day or the longer interviews,

We're grateful you're here.

I need to thank the creators of the music used in this episode,

Chilled Music,

Alexander Nakarada,

Lilo Sound and Music L-Files.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite-Sized Blessings website at bite-sizedblessings.

Com.

On the website,

You'll find links to books,

Music and change makers like Yancina and World Pulse.

Hopefully they all brighten and lighten your day.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Be like Yancina,

No matter what age you are,

See the challenge in front of you,

Engage it,

Build it,

And then take it out to the world.

Writer