Happy International Women’s Day!
March 8, this year, International Women’s Day is 100 years old!
Here is a flashback to what it was like in…
1911
More than one million women and men attended IWD rallies campaigning for women’s rights to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office and end discrimination. However less than a week later on 25 March, the tragic ‘Triangle Fire’ in New York City took the lives of more than 140 working women, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants. This disastrous event drew significant attention to working conditions and labour legislation in the United States that became a focus of subsequent International Women’s Day events. 1911 also saw women’s ‘Bread and Roses‘ campaign.
1913-1914
On the eve of World War I campaigning for peace, Russian women observed their first International Women’s Day on the last Sunday in February 1913. In 1913 following discussions, International Women’s Day was transferred to 8 March and this day has remained the global date for International Wommen’s Day ever since. In 1914 further women across Europe held rallies to campaign against the war and to express women’s solidarity.
excerpts from http://www.internationalwomensday.com/
At Development and Peace
Partner Profile: Afghan Women’s Resource Centre (AWRC)
The AWRC is an organization that uses microcredit to help Afghan women start small businesses and generate revenues so that they may fight their way out of poverty.
For Pary Gul, 30, the AWRC has changed her life and that of her family. She lives with her husband, their four children as well as her mother. With so many people to support, the family simply could not meet its basic needs.
Thanks to a loan of 5,000 afghanis (about $120.00) from the AWRC, Pary was able to buy a small bread oven and firewood and start baking dough brought to her by the community’s other women. After two months, Pary started preparing regional dishes (sambosa, manto and bolani) and baking her own bread in a traditional Afghan clay oven called a tanor, while her husband busied himself selling the bread. Through monthly payments, she managed to repay her loan quickly while providing for her family.
for more on our programs in Afghanistan: http://www.devp.org/devpme/eng/international/afghanistan-eng.html
Today let’s give thanks for, and celebrate, the strength and wisdom of women — sisters around the world who are working with their families and communities, in peace and with justice, to bring about God’s reign on earth!
by Genevieve Gallant
