Inspiring Women SUMMER 2020

The next TARGET PROJECT was announced at the
recent FAWCO Interim Meeting: S.A.F.E. (Safe
Alternatives for FGM Elimination), a project of Hope for
Girls and Women Tanzania (HGWT). You can click the
link to read more from FAWCO on the project.
The award winning film documentary maker, Giselle
Portenier, has made a film about the girls at HGWT, In
The Name of Your Daughter. She kindly took time out
of her busy schedule to tell us more about her life, the
film and how it came about:
My childhood was definitely not average! I was born in
Switzerland to a Swedish mom and a Swiss Dad. My
mother was never happy with my father but couldn’t
get a divorce without my father’s permission, so when I
was ten my mother ran off to South America with a
Latin lover and me in tow. We landed in Medellin,
Colombia, the city they call the city of eternal spring. I
remember we were very poor and for a long time had
only two beds, a table and three chairs in our small
rented home in the suburbs. But what I remember
more than anything from that time is the day I first
came face to face with the injustices in the world. My mom and I had taken the bus to go
downtown to do some shopping, when I saw a young girl, maybe three or four years younger
than I, wearing tattered clothing, all alone, begging in the street. I couldn’t understand how it
could be that she seemed to be living in the street. I couldn’t sleep for days, and always look
back on that afternoon as the day that inspired my passion to help create a more just world.
By the time I was in my teens, I had already lived in five countries and spoke four languages! The
last port of call was Canada, where I stayed through University. I studied journalism at Carleton
University in the nation’s capital, Ottawa, and then moved to Vancouver, British Columbia,
where I became a rookie reporter and TV anchor.
My professional life has been incredibly full and fulfilling; I
graduated from being a reporter and anchor in Canada to
being a filmmaker for Britain’s BBC and others. I have been
so lucky that I’ve been able to make documentaries
around the globe for decades; documentaries that have
succeeded in changing not only hearts and minds, but
laws too.
Many of my films have focused on the human rights of
women and children. I’ve traveled to more than 100
countries with my work, and I suspect it won’t be a surprise
to anyone that I never had children. It wouldn’t have been
fair to them. I often call my films “my babies“; many of the
documentaries continue to be influential in making
change, even years, sometimes decades, after they were
first made.
Somewhere in all of this, I reunited with my childhood
sweetheart, Chris Browne, and moved back to Canada.
Since then, I made In the Name of Your Daughter. It’s a film
that gives a voice to the inspiring Tanzanian girls whose
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