In 2013, Eunice Olsen was juggling an online talk series, a feature film and a hygiene education programme, and she kept returning to one idea: empowerment, she said, means being fearless of failure. The Singapore actress and host, then 36, was talking about Women Talk, the web series she had launched that year, and 3.50, a film about the sex trade in Cambodia in which she acted.
A former Nominated Member of Parliament, she was also a beauty queen and television host. By her own account, her work at the time took her between Singapore and Cambodia often.
Why Women Talk began
Olsen said the idea took shape in 2011, while she was hosting another programme. She met a woman who had lost weight so her husband would not be embarrassed to be seen with her. The story stayed with her. She wondered how many other women thought the same way, and whether a place where women spoke openly might show them that help existed.
The result, launched in August 2013, was WomenTalkTV, an online interview series. In her words, it shares stories of ordinary women doing extraordinary things, so that others feel encouraged to do what they have always wanted to do and know they are not alone. Olsen hosted every episode herself. It grew out of House of Ou Studios, the production company she started in 2011.
One early guest was women’s rights activist Haslinah Yacob, president of the Women For Equality Association in Malaysia. Olsen recalled that Yacob, a rape survivor who went on to help other survivors, told her the family’s lack of support hurt more than the assault itself. Olsen said survivors need to hear more often that it is not their fault and that seeking help is acceptable. Other early interviewees included Paralympic swimmer Yip Pin Xiu.
The series had a fundraising side. Each woman interviewed could nominate a charity, and viewers could donate through the site. Olsen called donating the easiest small gesture anyone could make. Viewers were also invited to send in videos of their own struggles or of women they admire.
Project Precious
Project Precious began while Olsen was in Cambodia researching 3.50. She visited the Sihanouk Centre for Hope, which works with people affected by HIV, some of them evicted from their homes. She has described how it began as a modest “gap” project. It started with bicycles so families with HIV-positive members could reach regular treatment. Donors then helped fund toilets for about 120 evicted families. That led her to ask whether any feminine hygiene education existed, and the centre’s team said none did.
The programme offers menstrual and feminine hygiene education and low-cost sanitary napkins to women in rural communities. Olsen’s own profile describes it as created in 2012 and now taught in urban communities too. It has been adapted for use in Cambodia, India, Nepal and the United States.
Doing good, in small steps
Olsen was candid about volunteering. People often asked her how to get involved, but she cautioned against a flood of volunteers arriving at a non-profit with no idea what it needs. Her advice was to ask the organisation what it needs and not to arrive with a fixed plan, a mistake she said she had made herself.
She also said not to dwell on whether you are making a difference. In her view, you do the work that needs doing. She admitted she did not know whether she had made, or ever would make, a difference, and said she would keep trying and believing in the work.
A stand-in mother
The most personal part of the 2013 conversation was her sponsorship of a girl from a community of HIV-positive families evicted to Oudong, Cambodia’s old capital. Olsen said the child had left school because of family poverty. She was paralysed from the waist down by a birth defect and had been made to drag herself up the steps of a mountain pagoda to beg for her family.
Olsen said she came back to her hotel very upset. Having grown up in a modest household where education was all she had, she felt every child should at least be able to go to school. She found the girl a school and began supporting her financially. By then the child’s birth mother had died of HIV complications, and Olsen described herself as a stand-in mum who visited often. She had recently celebrated the girl’s 13th birthday with her. The girl, by then, had a wheelchair and lived with an aunt and uncle. Olsen’s voice shook as she spoke about her, and she said she had long felt too protective to talk about the girl publicly before deciding that sharing the story might move others to act.
The film and what followed
3.50 premiered at Golden Village VivoCity on 24 October 2013, with a general release expected in February 2014. It was billed as the first Singapore-Cambodia co-production, and Olsen acted in and produced it.
WomenTalkTV was nominated for an International Emmy Award in the Digital Program: Non-Fiction category in 2014. It won seven awards at US independent film festivals in 2016 and was an official selection at the Raindance Film Festival in the UK. Olsen now runs Eunice Olsen Media, founded in 2013, which describes a focus on women’s empowerment, media and social-impact storytelling. She has also spoken on women’s empowerment and humanitarian action at forums, including a talk in New York on mental health advocacy for women and girls through technology.
She has said disability and women’s empowerment are the two causes closest to her heart. During lockdown, she said, talks with women who run mental health organisations convinced her that the topic needed more attention.