Women for Change

Today is International Women's Day with next year marking the 100th anniversary of this forum for celebrating women. Also a day set aside to spotlight the inequities of the world regarding the female gender, and campaign for change. In the industrialized world women are more vocal and active, therefor we have a much higher standard of living. But in the developing world, we are all aware of abuses ranging from wage inequality to femicide. Their cries are not heard.

To honor and help women living in these conditions, I joined the Join me on the Bridge campaign today. This is simply a matter of signing up so your voice can be heard in support of this pledge that will be presented to governments before the United Nations General Assembly in September 2010. Show that you care about making sure that government policies and actions support women and girls in building strong communities. Of course, if you are able there is a donation tab.

Since the topic of today is women, I received an email I'd like to share that relates to the issue of women working together for change, giving support to each other, and spreading kindness (of course!). Donna Maile wrote:

Tina - I am one of the teachers of the girls program at Women Writing for a Change. Our recent class theme was Kindness. We googled random acts of kindness, and found lots of resources, poems, and other ideas to promote and teach kindness. Some things we did in the class: We asked each member of our class to write on strips of brightly colored paper, any act of kindness they performed that week. We stapled the strips in loops in a chain and hung it on the wall. We used the song "I Can Change the World My Own Two Hands", by Jack Johnson, and asked the students to draw their hands and decorate a poster with words and pictures depicting these ideas. We used prompts for writing about how each could act in kindness. They wrote short notes to each other, called "dream notes" telling one another things they liked about their writing.