By Loretta B Manele
UN Women through the Markets for Change (M4C) project hosted an International Women’s Day breakfast event on 7th March, Friday at the Heritage Park Hotel.
The theme of the program was “Accelerate Action for all women and girls; Rights, Equality, Empowerment.”
They kicked off the program with opening remarks from Tristan Armstrong, Councillor from the Australian High Commission which was the followed a speech from Vaela Ngai, the Director for Women’s Development Division of MWYCFA.
The women then gathered for a group photo session to mark the special day before having their breakfast.
During breakfast, there was a panel discussion.
Patricia Maike, Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) officer from MWYCFA (Ministry of Women, Youth, Children & Family Affairs) was one of the panellists who contributed to the discussion.
The question asked to the panel was “How can MWYCFA enhance its collaboration with UN Women to implement more effective and targeted strategies that accelerate gender equality and empower women market vendors in Solomon Islands?”
Maike said the market for change program which market vendors come under is nicely aligned with MWYCFA policy under National Strategy on Economic Empowerment of Women and Girls.
This market for change program is an UN Women project and multi-country initiative with the aim to ensure that marketplaces in Fiji, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu are safe, inclusive, and non-discriminatory, promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment.
Meanwhile MWYCFA’s has a policy called the Gender Equality and Women’s Development (GEWD) Policy 2016-2020 which aims to promote gender equality and women’s human rights, with a vision of women and men as equal partners in development.
Maike stated that the ministry continues to work with its partners and stakeholders, government and even the private sector to make sure that this policy works.
She mentioned that MWYCFA is also working with financial institutions and CBSI is working closely with the ministry through platforms like YouSave that helps women in the rural areas to save money and other schemes like M-Selen.
Maike said one of the big things the ministry continues to roll out in our provinces through the provincial women development officers, is the Savings Club.
She stressed that UN Women and MWYCFA need to collaborate more on this because not everyone is involved in the Savings Club program.
“We need to make sure that all women come on board on this program.”
She added that MWYCFA and UN Women should also work together in terms of capacity building like training.
Maike expressed that this is important so that women can empowered and move on to take up bigger roles in life such as executive and leadership roles.
According to UN Women, they are implementing the Markets for Change (M4C) project, which is aimed at ensuring marketplaces in rural and urban areas in Solomon Islands are safe, inclusive and non-discriminatory environments, promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment.
The birth of International Women’s Day (IWD) came a long way.
As stated in an IWD website, it was back in 1910 that a second International Conference of Working Women was held in Copenhagen.
It was during this time when a woman by the name of Clara Zetkin, the leader of the ‘Women’s Office’ for the Social Democratic Party in Germany tabled the idea to have an International Women’s Day.
Her proposal was that every year in every country, there should be a celebration on the same day, a Women’s Day to press for their demands.
A conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties, working women’s clubs and including the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament welcomed Zetkin’s suggestion with unanimous approval which led to the birth of International Women’s Day.
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