un-youthrep-blog

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Consultation Day 3.13.2016

Consultation Day: kick off event for the commission on the status of women When I got to 92nd street y (which is a hotel or apartment or cultural center?) at 7:20 AM, I was immediately put to work. My first task as the AAUW UN Youth Rep was to stick "Reserved Seat" signs on the first three rows. As my manicure was getting ruined by the masking tape I was using to tape these signs, I made a note to myself to remember my humble beginnings when I become the Secretary of State (and I'm only half joking about that). My next task was to check in volunteers and make sure they had a ticket. This job made me more nervous than it should've, knowing I could mess the simplest task up, but luckily an intern for the NGO CSW (I need to look up what this stands for) kind of showed me the ropes. You literally just hand blue tickets to anyone who looks like they are volunteering. For the next half hour or so I kind of just stood around looking official with a clipboard and stack of tickets and that was the extent of my volunteering duties for the morning. My interest in women empowerment started in junior year of high school. In my Career Development class, a school mandated course, nearly every Junior girl wrote down that she wanted to be a teacher or a nurse. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with these professions, I was upset by the lack of dreamers among my female peers. Like I said before, I plan on being the Secretary of State one day. Boys in my class claim they wanted to be the next Jordan Belfort also known as the Wolf of Wall Street. As young people, there are no limits on our dreams, however the majority of girls in my class decided to play it safe. This is when I knew that I needed to join a larger movement for change. My goal as a female activist is not to burn bras or shame men. My goal is to have girls and women, across the world, believe they are equal and deserving of all of their wildest ambitions. To start the Consultation Day festivities was a forum between the head of UN Women and Ambassador from Brazil. I'm not going to lie, my notes from this are not great. Having left home at 5AM after four hours of sleep my brain wasn't quite fully functional. During this forum there was frequent reference to "civil society". What I've gathered from today is "civil society" refers to those civilians who are making strides in the goals of the UN. A hot topic of debate was should corporations be included in civil society. Both the head of UN women and ambassador agreed that no, the private sector should remain private. Due to the resources that corporations can provide, civil society must engage the private sector and encourage cooperation to achieve overarching goals. The next speaker, my personal favorite, was being honored as a Woman of Distinction today. Bandana Rana, the founder of Saathi in Nepal, had a inspiring story to tell. She got her starts in journalism. On commission by the UN, Rana was to make a documentary about the women of Nepal. When she was going house to house asking women to speak, she noticed that only men were voicing their opinions. Were the women of Nepal just shy? Did they want the men to speak for them? No. These women were being silenced by men. When Rana decided to wait outside their homes in the early morning when women would leave the house without men to gather food, she found that these women had so much to say when there were no longer men there to silence them. This was her wake up call. "The most insecure place for a mother, sister, daughter, is a house." Here was the inspiration for Saathi, which means friend in Nepalese. Saathi is an organization who provides shelter for women who decide to leave their abusive homes. The interesting thing is her family and friends did not support her organization. How could anyone not support an organization that helps women get out of places of violence? This is the kind of thing that makes me so excited to represent an organization to propels the female agenda. No woman should be okay with abuse just because that's how the way things have always been. She started to talk about the power of the collective voice. When a group aims to create change, they can. So, you, as an individual should join this collective voice because you CAN change the world. It's all about movement building. She called upon all of us, women leaders, to gather at the UN and begin creating change. My favorite quote of hers was "I want every home to rejoice at the birth of a daughter." This is a great summary of why I feel so passionately about empowering women. The life of a woman is equally as meaningful to the life of a man and the opportunities and treatment should show that. An AWESOME slam poetry duo spoke next. Their act was called Climbing PoeTree. Due to this lack of sleep thing, this pun took me longer to understand than it should've. Since I cannot even begin to describe how inspiring they were, so I'll share some takeaways instead.

1. Must prioritize self love to make sure others don't confine you 2. We have no time to philosophize or hallucinate about peace 3. Though we live in a time of trouble and destruction, we are all here in the world right now because it's up to us to induce positive reconstruction in the world Next was a panel of women campaigning for "No One Left Behind". This panel discussed the 2030 agenda, a list of goals the UN hopes to achieve by 2030. Again, my notes start to thin out as the lunch hour got closer. The main takeaways from this segment is we need to stop talking about gender equality issues and start implementing policies to fix them. The way to implement these policies is to remain ten steps ahead of those who are standing in the way of the 2030 agenda. So after a quick lunch break provided by CSW, since I was technically there as a volunteer, there were four break-out sessions offered. I chose to attend the one about health and education. Here, four organizations presented their current efforts. Since this post is getting quite long, I would like to touch base on the organization called Huru Kits. They provide reusable menstrual hygiene products to girls in Africa so they do not have to miss school due to mother nature. This organization stuck in my memory so well because this is not even something I would’ve even thought of is Huru Kits had not brought it to my attention. Another service Huru Kits provides is kind of like sex ed. They mentor both teenaged boys and girls what safe sex is and how to avoid things like STIs and pregnancy. Since menstruation and sex ed is something that is kept so hush-hush in American society, I’m glad someone is bringing it up in places like Africa. These girls, who are already considered a lesser class citizen, do not need to be dropping out of school when they reach puberty because they don’t have the hygiene products to attend school all days of the month.

Though a last minute decision to attend Consultation Day, I’m so happy that I did. As someone who has all this drive to change the world, but no direction, all the negativity in the world can be extremely discouraging. It was great to see such a strong community who cares about all the same issues that I do. I am honored to be apart of this community and excited to start making changes and inspiring other people like all the women who I heard spoke today already have. 

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It takes until March 15, 2016, for Asian American women to be paid as much as white men were paid in 2015 alone. Sound fair to you? 

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This week it was International Women’s Day. All around the world there are extra ordinary women inspiring others through their work, determination, and leadership.  

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Strong women lift each other up! Happy International Women’s Day, ladies. Thanks to all the amazing women who motivate, challenge, and inspire me to be a stronger, smarter ladyboss everyday.

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In case I peak at 19...

I’m starting this blog about my time as the AAUW UN Youth Rep just incase this is the coolest thing I’ll ever get to do. If I have just peaked, I wanna remember it all. Here’s to hoping it my life only gets better than here, but how much cooler does it get than a UN badge at 19.