The Womens Conference

10 Ways to Give Back This Holiday Season

11/30/09 | The Women's Conference Team | 3 Comments

1. VOLUNTEER – Is it something you think about, but rarely get around to doing?  Many organizations need special help over the holidays – from soup kitchens and domestic violence hotlines to senior citizen homes & children’s hospitals.  Find out what’s available in your own community. You can do it alone or recruit friends & family to share the experience.

2. DONATE – The holidays are a great time to purge your home & clean out your closets, drawers & kitchen cabinets.  What do you own but never use? Bring these items to a local shelter, Goodwill or Salvation Army, particularly winter clothes & coats.  And if you happen to have a box of old presents that you were planning to re-gift, consider giving them to someone who really needs them.

3. THE GIFT OF GIVING – Instead of buying yet another gift that a friend or family member doesn’t really need, make a donation in his or her name to a favorite charity or cause.

4. SHOP WITH A PURPOSE – Take a moment & give some thought to where & how you shop. Patronize stores and retail websites that sell handmade gifts, support small businesses & women entrepreneurs or donate a portion of their profits to charities.  You’ll be helping other people while supporting businesses that do the right thing. You can also check out The Women’s Conference own online store, Shop With A Purpose.

5. FEED THE HUNGRY – Donate canned goods to your local food banks and pantries. And if you’re organizing or attending office parties or holiday gatherings, anticipate whether you might have leftovers. If so, arrange ahead of time to deliver the excess food to local shelters.

6. MAKE A CHILD SMILE – Buy, collect & deliver toys to local charities or firehouses.  There are collections every holiday season in every city & town.

7. CHANGE A LIFE - Join The Women’s Conference “Team Maria” & make a loan to support a women entrepreneur.

8. CREATE YOUR OWN GIFTS - The most thoughtful & cherished gifts can be those that you make yourself. Even if you’re not an artist, you can buy a frame & fill it with a montage of family photos or create a scrapbook of mementos.

9. GREEN YOUR HOLIDAY – Reduce, reuse and recycle, and discover new ways to become more environmentally responsible in your gift giving, entertaining, dining, travel, recreation & decorating. 

10. REACH BEYOND THE HOLIDAY SEASON – Commit to giving back in the New Year. Make it more than a resolution.  Make it a reality.  WWW.WOMENSCONFERENCE.ORG will be bringing you tips & tools on how to be an architect of change and pass it on throughout 2010. Be sure to check in daily for our latest blogs, features, interviews and videos.

Do you know additional ways to give back over the holidays & beyond? Share them with us in the comments!

Happy Thanksgiving from The Women's Conference Team

11/23/09 | The Women's Conference Team | 2 Comments

The Women’s Conference team has a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, especially the support and friendship of our amazing community of women in California and across the country.  We wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving as you gather with your family and friends this week. 

We want to share with you our own thoughts about giving thanks this year, and we hope you will share yours with us, too.

Maria Shriver:

I'm thankful for the mother I had,
The father I have,
The family I was born into and the one I've created and
I'm so grateful every time anyone treats me with kindness.

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Erin Mulcahy Stein, Executive Director:

I am thankful for our creative conference team. It is a gift to work with people who care deeply, collaborate seamlessly and trust each other to do what’s best for the common goal— producing the nation’s premiere women’s conference.

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Margaret Lyons, Director of WE Programs:

I am grateful to everyone that helped me raise my two sons. They are wonderful men now--and every day I am thankful for those that reached out to help me.

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Erin Moos, Deputy Director of WE Programs:

I am thankful for my five senses.  There is nothing quite like the smell of fall turning to winter, hugging my friends and family when we get together, watching a college football game, hearing the sounds of a full and loving home or the taste of fresh pumpkin pie!

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Cherie Simon, Website Editor-in-Chief:

I’m thankful that life continues to have a delicious way of surprising the hell out of me. And I’m grateful to every single person in my life who is in any way responsible for that.

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Ande Dagan, Website Producer:

Besides the obvious, being thankful for family and friends, I am thankful that my parents raised me to be financially responsible in these hard economic times. I'm also thankful it's the last season of LOST - I can't take that show anymore.

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Sean Molloy, Conference Assistant:

I am thankful for being the only man that gets to work with all these fabulous, brilliant and inspiring women.

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Liberty Conboy, Senior Aide:

I'm thankful for my sardonic wit that gets me through each day.
I'm thankful that I am able to weep tears of empathy and through compassion bring solace to my fellows who are in pain. I'm equally thankful for those who lift me up when I'm at my bottom.
I'm thankful for good hand-me-downs and Recessionista parties!

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Tamara Torlakson, Program Associate:

I am thankful for everything I have learned this year from all of the amazing people I am surrounded by on a daily basis. They make me smile!

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Matthew diGirolamo, Marketing Director:

I am thankful that Maria Shriver has formed A Woman’s Nation and she’s granted me a special work VISA.

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Emma Brownell, Website Editorial Manager:

I am thankful for Los Angeles and its 360 days of sun, for books that transport me away, and for having 60-70 (aim high) good years ahead of me to figure out the mysteries of the world and to make my mark.

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Kim Barnes Kimball, Director of Operations:

I am fortunate for my many beautiful girlfriends.  As I approach 50 in the next few weeks I truly realize the depth of the love and friendship of these women.

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Kelli Schultz, Operations Team:

I'm thankful for a team that turns lemons into lemonade!  Straw into gold!  I'm thankful for a team that comes together once a year and is able to be gracious, productive and put on an amazing event.  It's amazing that so many disparate pieces from multiple locations can come together and make miracles happen -- the most fantastic Women's Conference!

What are you most thankful for? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!

Women Helping Women in Afghanistan

11/16/09 | Gayle Tzemach Lemmon | 2 Comments

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, Author

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon writes about how women are helping women in Afghanistan: Midwives are reducing infant and maternal mortalities in a country strapped for cash and medical services.

Afghanistan is home to the world’s second-highest maternal mortality rate.  And Badakshan, a stunningly beautiful province in the country’s north, has the worst maternal mortality figures ever reported anywhere in the globe.  But with the help of international donors and a growing legion of committed midwives which grows larger each year, better health care is reaching expectant mothers in provinces all across the country.  Once a maternal health basket case, Afghanistan is now a role model for other poor nations struggling to quickly scale up their efforts to save pregnant women’s lives.

Midwives are at the center of this progress.  Each morning women in nearly every province in Afghanistan go door to door in teams of two visiting homes and spreading their message about the importance of protecting an expectant mother’s health.  Using a picture book and a sterile birthing kit to illustrate the importance of hand washing, proper nutrition, and post-natal care, the women take their teachings to the nation’s most impoverished households.  Often their visit is the only professional healthcare the women they see each day will receive. 

The challenge of providing better maternal care in Afghanistan are formidable and deep-rooted.  As I wrote in a recent story for The Christian Science Monitor:

In 2002, 60 percent of Afghans had no access to basic health services, according to a study led by Linda Bartlett, then of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Furthermore, two-thirds of the country's districts had neither maternal nor child health services, with only 10 percent of Afghanistan's hospitals equipped for caesarean deliveries. Nearly 80 percent of the maternal deaths examined in Dr. Bartlett's study were judged preventable.

But today, these numbers are beginning to turn around. From fewer than 500 midwives with no standard training, Afghanistan now has more than 2,400 nationally accredited midwives who have graduated from the country’s standardized, two-year midwifery education program.  Skilled birth attendants can now be found nationwide, with Johns Hopkins University research showing that even in the country’s hard-to-reach rural regions, midwife use jumped from 6 percent in 2003 to 19 percent in 2006.  In fact, so much progress appears to have been made that the nation’s Ministry of Public Health is now launching a follow-up survey to assess the impact of recent maternal health efforts, just seven years after the last round of research began. And it is not just in Afghanistan that the impact of their work is being felt: In December, Afghan midwives will join colleagues from Pakistan and India in offering to help the nations of Bhutan and Nepal to establish their own midwifery associations and accreditation programs. International health professionals say that they are evaluating Afghanistan's success in rapidly scaling up emergency interventions to help them develop health strategies for women in other least-developed nations.
 
While Afghanistan’s grave maternal mortality problems will take time and investment to fully reverse, it is clear the country is on its way to addressing some of the most pressing issues facing women’s health. With the help of midwives, the word is spreading that small measures can save women’s lives -- and help them bring healthier babies into the world.   

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is a former ABC News producer who began writing about women's entrepreneurship during her second year of MBA study at Harvard. She currently is working on a book to be published by HarperCollins in 2010 about a young entrepreneur who supported her family and her community during the Taliban years.

Make Time for Change: A Guide for Busy 20-Somethings

11/10/09 | Corynne Steindler | 6 Comments

Corynne Steindler, Journalist

We're all looking for that mysterious, elusive thing – more time. And it turns out, we just may have it – if we're savvy about how we schedule it.

Time is especially precious for women (like me) in their twenties. We're the first into the office in the morning, and the last to leave at night.  Not a career woman? You may be swamped with grad school classes, or you may be the friend constantly saddled with planning engagement parties and bridal showers. But where to find time, and how can we use it to start giving back to our communities? Time -- or the lack thereof -- is keeping many women from becoming Architects of Change. 
 
To find the answer, I decided to pull together a list of "personal time" activities I regularly take part in.  Surprisingly, I discovered that there are at least 10 hours in my week devoted to mindless activities, which could be used for bettering my community. I don't suggest completely giving up your downtime, but by eliminating the time (and money) spent on unnecessary activities, you can create a little wiggle room in your schedule to create time for change.

Here's how you might start incorporating time for change into your schedule:

How to get started:

• Make a list of your weekly activities.  If anything on the list is negative or energy-draining, cut it and replace it with a service-focused activity.
• Find a buddy.  It is so much more fun to paint, walk, or clean when you have a friend.
• Multitask.  If you work out every Saturday, devote one Saturday a month to a fitness-focused service project.
• When it's your turn to host girls’ night, ask everyone to bring books to donate to a struggling school district.
• Find something you love.  Whether you are passionate about animals or you are a health freak, there are volunteer opportunities for everyone.  CaliforniaVolunteers.org's matching program pairs organizations in need with volunteers who are passionate about the cause.
• Expand your dating pool. Would you rather meet someone drinking at a bar, or someone who is helping clean up his/her community? Or, if you have a boyfriend/girlfriend, plan your next date night at a homeless shelter or food bank.

Time is not as elusive as we make it out to be – it’s just a matter of looking for it in the right places. 
 
Corynne Steindler is a senior reporter at HollywoodLife.com.  Previously, she worked as a reporter for the Page Six column of the New York Post, and was the editor of media and celebrity gossip blog Jossip.com.  Corynne is a native of the Chicago suburbs, and she moved to New York in 2001 to study Journalism and Gender Studies, and spent time traveling to Spain and Russia during her college years. When not covering the party circuit, Corynne can be found glued to reality TV programs on E! and Bravo, or preferably, spinning at SoulCycle. She lives in Manhattan.

Shakira: "Education Is a Right"

11/3/09 | Shakira | 3 Comments

Shakira, Recording Artist & Founder, Barefoot Foundation

As a young girl in Colombia, I promised myself that, someday, I would help change the lives of the barefoot, desperate children living in the parks around my home.  I had the audacity of youth: I remember thinking that every child deserved the opportunity to learn.  I also had the clarity of youth: I knew that all children deserved an equal chance.

When I was eighteen, I took the first steps toward keeping my promise.  I started the Pies Descalzos ("Bare Feet") Foundation in honor of the barefoot children who inspired me.  The Foundation’s mission is to ensure that all children can exercise their right to a quality education and a chance to fulfill their true potential.  We provide nutritious meals, quality education and psychological support to more than five thousand students and their families across Colombia. 

Education is a right, not a privilege, and we need to treat it that way.  Far too often, children who are born poor die poor, trapping too many children in a cycle of despair.  Education is the most powerful way to break the cycle.  Education affects every aspect of development.  Research has shown that access to education increases wages, lowers the risk of disease and decreases the likelihood a child will turn to a destructive violent life.  A single year of primary education can increase a girl’s wages by 10 to 20 percent later in life.  We cannot possibly hope to thrive as a global community if we continue to turn our backs on the potential and talents of millions of children.  

It’s difficult to believe that, in today’s world, 72 million kids don’t have access to any kind of education, and 226 million adolescents don’t attend secondary school. Hundreds of millions who do attend school can’t learn because of inadequate teachers, lack of supplies or empty stomachs.

Our schools in Colombia are proving each and every day that no matter where a child is from, no matter how poor they are, they can thrive if given the chance.  The best part of my work is watching students blossom and make something of their lives.  Last year, a student from a Pies Descalzos school placed 14th out of the whole country in Colombia’s national exams.  He came from extreme poverty and suffered from malnutrition as a child.  Today, he’s in college and working to use his education to give back to his community.  We have seen that every child has a contribution to share.

Now, we are bringing our model to the U.S. and the rest of the world.  Education for every child is within our reach.  Let’s make a commitment to the children of the world.  Let us tell them -- today -- that we see their value, no matter where they happen to have been born or how difficult their circumstances.  Let’s make clear that we believe in them and that through hard work they can improve their lives.  Let’s commit to giving them the tools they need to build our future.

Shakira with the students of the Barefoot Foundation

Photo by Tobias Kaeufer

Photo by Tobias Kaeufer

Internationally acclaimed recording artist Shakira is a leading advocate for universal education. Her Pies Descalzos foundation has helped over 28,000 of Colombia’s children access education. Her US-based Barefoot Foundation is expanding her work internationally.  Shakira is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and honorary chair of the Global Campaign for Education.  She is the 6th highest selling artist of all time and the winner of two Grammys, eight Latin Grammys and countless awards worldwide.