Empowering Women & Girls: The Only Way to Accomplish the UN SDGs 

A blog by Jo Breneman

“Together with eight Soroptimist members and hundreds of other attendees at the 68th Civil Society Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, Aug 26-28, 2019, we listened to and learned from Smina Adhikari, Natalie W. Romeri-Lewis, Celeste Mergens, and James B. Mayfield who shared/reported data and positive trends during a 90 minute workshop entitled “Empowering Women & Girls: The Only Way to Accomplish the SDGs”, which included:

  1. The benefits of providing puberty & sanitation education to men, women and girls;
  2. The process of turning periods into pathways by creating ‘the perfect pad’ for women and girls in developing countries (a Days for Girls programme), without which, girls are absent from school during menstruation, and isolated without remediation or tutoring upon returning to school, and;
  3. The mind-blowing results of a Mayfield’s three year project (2014-17), to successfully end poverty in Nepal villages, rooted in teams of 50% women and 50% men, accelerated through face-to-face interaction.

50% men. 50% women. It works, when all have a voice and buy-in, and participate using common core values of integrity, fairness, tolerance, compassion and commitment. I think there’s a lot to be achieved in this world using such a resource mobilisation formula.”

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