NH Women's Caucus

This entry doesn't have anything to do directly with my volunteer trip to Guatemala, but I was lucky enough to attend "What Women Want Now: the New Hampshire Women's Caucus" yesterday and learned a lot that is relevant to women in my community and abroad. The caucus was the first women's caucus in NH and took place at Colby Sawyer.

The conference aimed to identify the issues most critical to women and equip participants with resources that help them improve women's status locally and globally. Specifically we focused on educating women about the issues most important to them in the following areas: the economy, health and health care and global women's issues. What I took away from this conference is that there is still a long way for women to go in terms of achieving equality in America and even more so abroad, but that there is a lot we can do to make a difference.

The key note speaker was Sheryl WuDunn, co-author of New York Times best-selling book, "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide" (which many of you can expect for Christmas!!). She gave an incredibly moving key note speech in which she discusses why sex trafficking, gender-based violence among other abuses make women's rights the greatest moral issue of the 21st century. Take 20 minutes to watch it - it's very empowering.

Expect entries about some of the big issues we discussed over the next few weeks.