DPI/NGO 2010 -WAGGGS & SI-Women Girl Power at work!

Women and Girl Power UN/DPI Melbourne

The Soroptimist International - WAGGGS joint presentation this
afternoon was very successful.

The room was full to overflowing and the audience included several
men. Each of the five presenters did a extremely professional job and
the workshop was moderated enthusiastically by International Programme
Director, Dawn Marie Lemonds, who totally engaged the audience in the
discussion which followed the presentation. The WAGGGS presenters
talked of the strategies employed to deliver their message to women and girls
around the world of empowering women and girls. What a wonderful group these
young women have been to work alongside.

International President Elect, Alice Wells, told the audience about
our international projects - Project SIerra and Hopes and Dreams for
Everyone. SISWP President Yvonne Simpson spoke about some of the
federation projects which empower young girls to take charge of their
lives in order to live in safe and healthy environments. Included in
her examples were the SI Beenleigh "Date advice bookmarks" and SI
Westland's successful 'Cyber bullying' workshops.

Yvonne also outlined the work which will be carried out in the
Birthing in the Pacific project in Papua New Guinea. This project has
elicited quite a lot of interest as it addresses one of the major
issues of this conference - Maternal Health and Mortality.

Our WAGGGS presenters were Linden Edgell and Susanna Matters. Linden represented the global vision of the 10 million members around the world and Susanna shared several examples of girls and young women, as young as six, all working toward helping the world be free of violence for girls (and women). "If 10 million people address the "elephant in the room" which is the fact that 1 of every 10 women will be abused in their lives- the door to understanding and solution will be pushed more widely open in the world!"

Our final speaker is new friend to Soroptimists - Dr. Lyndal Trevena- from Australian Federation for Medical Women. She presented two fascinating projects: one in Africa that addresses Female Genital Cutting (FGM) and the other was a highly successful project in India that assisted women to get treatment for Cervical Cancer.

Dawn Marie then facilitated a lively interactive discussion on
strategies other NGOs use in their work getting ideas from all over the world.

All in all - a successful day.

At UN/DPI

Robyn Cain, Federation Programme Director in South West Pacific