Today is International Women's Day and to celebrate in Belize we had the first ever Women's Summit. Under the theme women: embracing leadership with vision, women in leadership positions gathered at the Radisson to discuss issues pertaining to women's educational achievements and challenges, sexual reproductive health and their roles in leadership and decision making roles. Here's our report.
Alfonso Noble Reporting,
In a room full of leading women in society the first ever Women's Summit commenced. President of the National Women's Commission Narda Garcia says that on the agenda are topics of key importance in women's development.
Narda Garcia, President of National Women's Commission
"We feel that its very important, there are three topics actually that we are discussing today, very important to women, which is education, health and leadership. so we believe that by exploring and discussing and getting different perspectives on these topics, we can come to the conclusion a to where we are in terms of where women can participate more, how they can have more input into the issues that affect us on a daily basis."
Carol Fonseca, Dir. of Women's Department
"Those are he areas that we face most challenges in terms of girls and women throughout our country."
But while problem areas for women are clearly defined and the summit will address them, there is still the challenge of transferring the outcome of today's summit on to the larger society. Garcia says that is one of the focuses of the exercise: to transfer information from this formal environment to the general public.
Narda Garcia,
"This allows us the opportunity to explore and to in fact agree on where we are and what we need to do to in fact translate, these issues and discuss the issues and address the issues so that they affect the average women out there."
Carol Fonseca,
"We have so many women that are coming from the districts, the rural areas. We are also hoping that in terms of women empowerment, and the participation of women, that that will ensure that the issues that these women face would be brought to the table and we will be able to discuss and dialogue about them and hopefully come up with where exactly the way forward is in terms of the challenges. These are the lives of women, the daily reality of what women are actually going through everyday of their lives and many of the women in this room face similar challenges as many women throughout country. And so in bringing their lives to the summit, its really bringing the voice of so many of our Belizean women throughout our country. What we'll have is a good interaction between our national sisters and our international sisters, dialoguing about similar challenges that they also face in their own communities."
And with the participation of leading U.S. women's rights activists like Ms. Shabazz and her delegation, the summit will have those gathered here today with a keener sense of the theme: women embracing leadership with vision.
The week long activities continue tomorrow with an anti domestic violence rally and a student's summit.
