Meet Amelia Thompson

We recently connected with Amelia Thompson and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Amelia, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

I have found that gratitude has an amazing multiplicative effect. The more I am grateful, the more I have to be thankful for, and the more that I attract reasons to express thankfulness. To cultivate this gratitude resolve, at the end of each day, I try to identify and write down a few moments or events from the day that are reasons to express appreciation. Deliberately looking at my life and naming the blessings that make life sweeter even (and perhaps especially) on difficult days and during challenging seasons has helped me gain perspective and the ability to recover from setbacks. I began this practice longer ago than I can remember, but it has been one of the most important habits that has allowed me to face each day with a greater sense of resolve. In this way, I develop resilience as a muscle that I have chosen to train and strengthen through the practice of gratitude.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

Have you heard of The Five Love Languages (link – https://5lovelanguages.com/)? Dr. Gary Chapman’s seminal work on how to encourage greater appreciation in our most intimate relationships. His work has been used to strengthen relationships in a range of contexts – among coworkers, between parents and children, and in school settings. In 2020, during a season of intensified social unrest largely spurred by police killings of Black men and women in America, I saw an unlikely opportunity – to use Dr. Chapman’s work as a bridge to practice and discover the language of social justice. I translated each of Dr. Chapman’s love languages into an expression of how to foster a culture of justice in our daily lives. As an example, if your love language is words of affirmation, then the parallel justice expression is Justice Speaks Out. This language of justice invites us to use our voices on social media, in boardrooms, and across our dinner tables to call attention to injustice. Find out more about this work (link – https://renewtoday.net/justiceloves/).

I then saw the applicability of this framework to other issues including gender inequity that impacts women and girls. I have since used this framework to inspire discussion and action around period poverty. Period poverty is a lack of access to materials, knowledge, and facilities that make it harder for women and girls to menstruate with a sense of wellness, dignity, and safety. Its prevalence in low-income and resource-restricted contexts makes it harder for millions of girls and women around the world to reach their full potential.

Some of our work includes developing a workshop based on The Five Languages of Equity for Harvard University’s Division of Continuing Education. As of this year, we have worked with 300 students with more than 95% of students who completed a post-workshop survey (n=250) reporting their understanding of period poverty has increased through participating.

I also designed the WeDeliverPeriod Impact Fellowship which provides support and stipends to social entrepreneurs working in sub-Saharan Africa to help girls stay in school by advancing menstrual health equity. To date, we’ve worked with 18 Fellows from 10 countries.

We also launched the WeDeliverPeriod Global Ambassadors program for high school and college students who want to inspire activism to tackle period poverty in their local context. Through the initiative, we support their efforts to develop and launch school clubs and chapters that raise awareness about and address menstrual inequity in their communities. I have worked with students in Ghana, Liberia, Canada, Costa Rica, Switzerland, China, Sri Lanka, and the United States. One of our Global Ambassadors was acknowledged by the Director of the White House Gender Policy Council for her efforts to raise awareness about menstrual inequity in the United States.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

When completing graduate studies at St. John’s University, I realized I needed more time to complete the program than my peers. Rather than complete the degree in the set two-year period, I took an extra six months. The original two-year period to complete the degree did not fit well given my full-time teaching schedule. But I used the original two-year timeline to define my sense of success. The day I decided to grant myself more time marked a shift in my career that helped me discover and practice three of the most important skills in my career journey – the willingness to embrace my own path; the capacity to set a new goal; and the commitment to excellence (which sometimes takes more time).

To my surprise, although I extended my graduate studies by an additional six months, I was still invited to walk in the graduation ceremony, and I received a certificate of excellence during the event. This experience taught me that when I stop living by artificial timelines that others set for me, God helps me accomplish my goals with excellence and much more – peace.

This is not an encouragement to set anything less than ambitious and audacious goals – instead, it is a reminder, that those goals need not control nor define us. We have the responsibility to exercise authority over when and how we achieve our goals and craft our own personal and professional journeys.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

We love to partner. Some of our partners have included the Steve Harvey Foundation, the United Nations, and numerous schools, universities, and businesses that have helped host events and workshops to raise awareness about period poverty.
If you’re committed to joining the global mission to celebrate the purpose and dignity of women and girls, we’d love to hear from you – please feel free to find us on IG @wedeliverperiod and contact us at [email protected].
One of my life’s missions is to inspire a global community dedicated to celebrating the purpose and dignity of women and girls, especially those living in vulnerable contexts. My mission has only just begun and I hope you’ll join me.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Headshot: Jeremy Bustin
Liberia photos: Stephen P. Ben

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