International Women’s Day 2021
This week we held two International Women’s Day events, one at Cockburn and one in Kwinana. It’s always great to get our community together and share our journeys.
This year’s theme was #ChooseToChallenge. A challenged world is an alert world. Individually, we are all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all day, every day. We can choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements. It’s a day for inspiration and change, it’s a day to choose to challenge.
Our IWD celebrations kicked off on Tuesday 9 March at the CRC in Cockburn. We were excited to welcome two males to our event City of Cockburn Mayor Logan Howlett and David Scaife, local labor candidate for Cockburn.
Community members gathered to listen to our guest speaker Kelley Chisholm who is a speaker, author, overseas aid worker and co-founder of ‘kinwomen’. She is also the founder of Foxglove Project, with its flagship program Grassroots Rwanda supporting more than 20,000 women into self-help groups and small business. Kelley spoke about the Foxglove Project, and how they work in the developing world supporting women into micro business so they can support their own families and provide for their futures.
“You don’t need to start to be big, we just need to start. Success is going from one thing to the next without losing enthusiasm.”
Following Kelley’s inspirational talk, we held lean-in circles where we spoke about women who were inspirational to us with grandmothers topping the list! One lady spoke about how her mother was an inspiration to her – a solo parent who emigrated the family to Australia where she got a university degree and created a warm loving family home.
Next up we challenged our lovely ladies to MOVE IT by all coming together to take part in the Jerusalema dance challenge! Whilst most were hesitant to give it a go, they challenged themselves and had a blast doing do.
Our celebrations continued Wednesday 10 March in Kwinana where 70 guests joined us to listen to an on-the-couch session celebrating women’s achievements with key speakers including the City of Kwinana Mayor Carol Adams, Sarah Thomson from Online Social Butterfly, Tina Fielding a local writer, producer and actress in the recently released short film Sparkles.
Following this attendees feasted on Kangaroo Stew & Damper for lunch on the day provided by The Ngalla Yorga Waangkan (Aboriginal Women’s Group). Whilst they ate Djai Hunter performed a contemporary Aboriginal Dance Becoming A Woman music- Boordah – by Gina Williams.
To round off the event Meg Summers a local yoga instructor performed some breath work.
We encourage you all to take time this week to thank the amazing women in your lives who have encouraged, inspired and motivated you to be the strong, confident and intelligent woman you are today.
