Empowering Women Globally

 On March 15th, the Poly-UNA chapter hosted a panel event and discussion for its annual International Women's Day celebration. I was honored to introduce the speakers and panelists from American Women for International Understanding, The Lily Project, and IThuba. 

The panel begun when we asked Each organization a couple of introduction questions about their program, their work, their involvement, and current status of the program. 

First, the panelists introduced their organizations and all of their underlying missions to empower women through education and advocacy. One thing that was very interesting was that the organization was founded over 50 years ago when a group of women traveled to the Soviet Union to do diplomacy. Since they have been providing grant proposals, scholarships, and passports to women internationally through the Passport to the Future Program. The International Women of Courage Celebration is one of their six main programs. "The AWIU IWOC celebration acknowledges women for their courageous and selfless efforts advocating for human rights, women's equality, and social progress, often in the face of great personal risk." Ms. Anick, who is a cochair of the virtual IWOC celebration, spoke about all of the amazing awardees this year. Jackie, a student panelist for AWIU was excited to hand out roses to the IWOC honorees this year. 

Moving on, Ms. Garcia from the Lily Project shared all about the organization's focus on women's health and education centered in Nicaragua. The Lily Project has been providing contraceptives, teaching young women about their reproductive and sexual health, which is commendable work considering the difficulties that the pandemic sparked. In addition, Maggie, a senior at Poly and Global Scholar, along with two other Poly students, Katie and Olivia, started a group titled Sexual Health Education Nicaragua, or SHE Nicaragua, with Ms. Garcia as the advisor. Along with her partnership with the Lily Project, she shared about the recent publication of her book about women's health and education. As devastating as it is, the woman started the organization to provide cervical cancer screenings after her mother passed. Since then, the Lily Project continues to make connections from women to women through art, education, journal writing, and story sharing. 

The last of the organizations to present was iThuba, a program that strives to open STEM opportunities to young women in South Africa. iThuba has been in partnership with Poly and the WSL for many years. With the help of Ms. Flannery and Siviwe, panelist Maya, a former Poly student and Global Scholar introduced the program to Poly through her Capstone project. Another Poly alumni, Megan was drawn to iThuba because she was connected to the concept of "universal sisterhood," which is why she, and Jacqueline, successfullly achieved the goal to create test prep program to meet level of need of literacy for graduating iThuba students to enter the high school. Just last year, Megan and Jacqueline successfully raised $11,000 for iThuba to continue their mission of empowering women. As of today, a 100% of iThuba students have now graduated and will enter LEAP High school and 80% of these students are girls with strong literacy and STEM knowledge for the future! 

Beyond the work of the program leaders, this panel discussion focuses on the active role of the student leaders. All of the student panelists had such insightful things to say about advocacy for women, how they contitnue to be involved in leadership, and most importantly, how we as an audience can get involved. Luckily, iThuba, AWIU, and the Lily Project are all open to anyone who is interested in empowering women and are always looking for more leaders. Overall, this was a very impactful experience and all these exceptional women inspired me as I am sure it did my female peers.