Jensine Larsen - A Woman Who Inspires: Connecting Women Worldwide for Change

It has been a long time that I have been active in the Women’s Movement. More than 50 years. Along the way I have met, been in meetings with, been in the streets with, read about, heard about, and also imagined the lives of those who were there but without their own stories being known. Many strong, brave and visionary women. But with this call for a story of a woman who has inspired me, one woman stands out, a shining amazon, a woman who has dreamed up the seemingly impossible, trusting her own sense of purpose, trusting that she could make a difference by following her own heart and her own vision of what is possible and what needs to happen. I want to write about Jensine Larsen and how she inspired me. I have read her story, watched her tell it onstage, and was able to learn more when I had the chance to meet her in person. She has shown me what one woman can do to create real change in this world.

When she was young she took herself on some travels as an independent reporter. She went off the beaten track and met with women who asked her to tell the world about their lives, the conditions they were living in, and what was needed for change. Most reporters would report this news, but Jensine had a different idea. To find ways for women to tell our own stories, a forum in which these stories would be known, and through which women could make connections with each other. World Pulse was born.

It began as a magazine, a magazine that grabbed my attention because it was full of women’s stories. Stories told by the women themselves. Stories from all over the world. This in itself was something I had searched for, hoped for, had not even imagined possible. But Jensine did. And she kept going. The magazine was published alongside new growth, the addition of an online network, the brainstorm of this woman who imagined women having access to online resources, to tell our stories ourselves, and to have a way to find and make connections with each other. Connections to support each other, to encourage each other, to merge our plans with each other, toward a world in which all women and girls are free. Free to show respect for each other, the respect for women that we all knew in our hearts was a crucial missing part in this world.

As this online platform grew, the magazine ended, but I have a few copies that remind me of those early days when Jensine was beginning to dream up what grew from there. Her focus became the development of this online network that would make it possible for women everywhere to log on and tell our own stories, find each other by reading, looking through the membership for women in our own countries, private messaging to women for secure conversations across borders, take free digital training through the site to develop our own plans for how to use this site. A way to become involved by writing our experiences, hopes and plans, and, if we wanted to get more deeply involved, to donate a few hours a week responding to stories coming in.

This, I thought, is brilliant. To me it was a gift, to be part of the inside of what was at that point a flourishing, international news network, built by women voicing their own stories and their own news. This was the news that I had been so hungry to find, news not reported in the conventional media. I was being invited to be a member, playing an important part. And in return for my volunteering as an encourager, I was regularly keeping up to date on what news was coming in globally, and those responses were openings that we were all picking up on, to form with each other such important alliances, to develop networks, to brainstorm solutions, and to simply love each other for who we are and what we are doing. I was inspired on a level I had not imagined possible.

Then invitations were sent out to members for free digital empowerment training, for those of us wanting to expand our own change making, to strengthen our own writing capabilities, to develop plans for programs and action in our communities. I was inspired to jump in deeper. Jensine had pulled together a brilliant small and dedicated Team, and a Board, and formed alliances with many like-hearted women’s and nonprofit organizations working for the same goals, while this multi-lingual social network platform continued to expand, enabling us all to speak for ourselves, bring problems and solutions to the table and to plan together, building a women’s movement that is truly global.

What Jensine has dreamed up for us all has become an online movement of 70,000 from 190 countries working in a multitude of ways to end every form of suppression of and violence toward women and girls everywhere, to protect the earth, and to form a different society, better for everyone. Jensine has inspired me to find my own way for how to be part of a women’s movement that I had thought I could only dream might be possible. The thought, the hope that there must be women everywhere standing up to the message we are given generation after generation - that men are meant to be in control, and that women who fight against that in any way deserve to be punished verbally, physically, economically and too often with death.

She has developed a system that allows for, greatly encourages us all to join in with our voices, our ideas, our news reports, our photos of what we are doing in our own communities, and photos of the rare occasions when we have the chance to meet in person. She has shown me how very real virtual relationships can be. These relationships that are built on our knowledge that we are working together everywhere, in our own ways, in our own communities, with the deep love and respect that we have for each other, for the work we are doing to create freedom for women and girls, and through women’s leadership, a world in which everyone will benefit. She has inspired me to realize how women can work across culture, across religion, across language, across different backgrounds and experiences, toward the world we dream of, no one being harmed, no one being left out, no one lacking what we need.

Before I was aware of World Pulse, and Jensine, I had been active as a determined feminist in my country for many years, I had done some travelling and listening to women. I had spoken regularly at women’s events, written on what needs to change, listened to thousands of women’s stories, found ways to offer support, linking with other women who felt as I do, that we are here on this earth to end this violence against women and girls. Women who like me cannot bear the amount of pain that we wake to every day, knowing what so many women are experiencing every day of their lives.

But Jensine has inspired me to recognize what we are capable of, what is possible, what we have now, as a global network of women working together to create something new, the world we all know in our hearts is possible. My voice, my words, my imagination have grown. Jensine has shown me that the movement I have dreamed of is not only possible, it is here, vibrant and growing, solid in the connections we now have, and open to all who want to work for the world we know is possible deep in our hearts.

Never has this interconnection been more essential than now. As we face the global pandemic of the corona virus, we World Pulse members are able to face it with each other. We already know where each other are, and what is happening in our communities. We know what needs to happen with the different conditions people face in our own regions. It is time for women’s voices to rise together to create the global society that we know is not only possible but necessary.