Photo credit: Cicely Blain
Ryanne and Passions
Ryanne James is the First Nations House of Learning Outreach Coordinator and a student in the UBC School of Community and Regional Planning, specialising in Indigenous Community Planning. She is passionate about family, soccer, friendship, community, and gardening. In her spare time, she enjoys reading children’s books, playing soccer, and plotting on how to become the best 37-year-old break-dancer that this campus has ever seen.
She is passionate about people-issues and playing a role in a world where each individual, regardless of race, gender, culture, or background, has the right to education, work, nourishment, safety, physical, and mental health.
Ryanne and International Women’s Day
This International Women’s Day, Ryanne is celebrating her mother as well as many friends and family members. These are the women that inspire, support, and nurture her. “They are my mentors, they are my mentees, my friends, my peers, my elders, my family, and my lifelines in an often tumultuous but splendid life,” she says. Every day these women teach her what it means to be a woman and the importance of this role in our world. They inspire her to be brighter, think bigger, and treat the challenges that we all face as opportunities to effect positive change.
This International Women’s Day Ryanne is celebrating them all for the fights they make her have, the beauty the make her see, for believing in her and for listening to her. “I am so grateful for all of the strong, intelligent, thoughtful, expressive, and magical women in my life,” she says.
Ryanne lists the following friends and family members as very inspirational to her: her Mom, Shoshanna, Emmily, Constance, Debra, Danette, Amanda, Amanda, Shona, Veronica, Tasha, Jodi, Tine, Vivian, Tess, Vanessa, Ashley, Annie, Gina, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Amy, Katherine, Lisa, Robin, Leona, Meika, Loraine, Hazel, Normajean, Scarlett, Carolina, Aftab, Sashia, Steph, Marny, Tanja, Tara, and Erin.
Ryanne says she will continue to play a role in empowering young women to find their voices, take responsibility for their actions, and become strong, self-reliant, and confident.
Ryanne and Female Empowerment
To her, female empowerment means working with your entire community, all genders, races, and cultural identities, to create a space where each individual can be respected for who they are, who they would like to become, and the things that they have experienced in the past. She believes that female empowerment means that you take an active role in your community and work to ensure that the voices of your community members are being heard as much as your own voice.