International Womens Day

As part of an assignment, I am required to post five blogs. The following five blogs are work that I have written and have had published.


International Women’s Day is a day to bring women’s issues to the forefront.
This is something that Rahno Godfrey, the training education co-ordinator for Three Oaks Foundation believes.
“There is abuse going on every day and it is important to keep this information alight,” she says, ”Part of my job is to bring public awareness to that.”
Three Oaks Foundation is collaborating with Amnesty International, Canadian Federation of University Women Belleville and District and many other groups to organized an event on March 8 to celebrate women. From 2:30-4:30 p.m on March 8, Bridge Street United Church, which is located at 60 Bridge St., is holding Sharing the Caring for the Future, which will feature the very moving activist Mimi Kashira who is going to share information on the situation of women in Congo and her work with the Pastor Emmanuel Kashira Foundation.
The foundation was established to raise money to help victims of war in Kashira’s home city of Goma. Any donations help to put girls in schools and provide micro-credit loans for widows.
Mimi Kashira, who lived in Congo until her husband was a victim of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, passed away leaving her to feed and nurture two boys. She dealt with many obstacles to face the task of raising her sons. She is now devoting most of her time to help women in Congo.
International Women’s Day is a day intended for women everywhere to be acknowledged for everything they’ve done.
According to the International Women’s Day website, it all began in 1908, when women were becoming more vocal about change and as a result, 15,000 women marched through New York City to protest for voting rights, better wages and shorter hours.
The birth of International Women’s day took place in 1910, when more then 100 women from 17 countries came together at the International Conference of Working Women to represent unions, socialist parties, and working women’s clubs. The conference included three women ,who were part of the Finnish parliament, who supported Clara Zetkin’s idea for International Women’s Day. Zetkin was the leader of the ‘Women’s Office for the Social Democratic party in Germany.
According to the website, the following year, Zetkin’s idea for International Women’s Day took place for the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on March 19. More then one million men and women gathered together to protest for women’s rights. Some of the rights protested for included the right to work, the right to vote, to be trained and to end discrimination.
Disturbingly less then a week later, on March 25, more then 140 women working were murdered in the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City. The fire happened March 25, 1911 and was said to be the worst workplace disaster until Sept. 11, 2001. Most of the lives lost in the Triangle fire were of Italian or Jewish decent. The silver lining of this event is that from the tragedies, attention was brought to the working conditions and labour legislation.
As a result of the contributions that women fought for, the popularity of International Women’s Day has continued to grow. For years after the ‘Triangle Fire’, the day continued to flourish, with the United Nations holding annual International Women’s Day conferences to help organize efforts for women’s rights.
According to the website, in 1975, the United Nations declared this year International Women’s Year. Organizations and governments around the world noticed that large events were being held throughout the world on March 8, and those events continued to honour women’s advancements while still reminding the world of the vigilance and action that women were still making to ensure advancement.
According to the International Women’s Day website, International Women’s Day is now an official holiday in China, Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. IWD is seen as a day to award mothers, daughters, grandmothers and friends with flowers and small gifts.
Godfrey thinks that International Women’s Day is extremely important.
“I hope that everyone will join us to help change the happen.”