DSW’s Women Deliver Daily Diary – Day 3: better than Vegas

Did I say that Women Deliver started early I swear it is earlier and earlier each day. Wednesday morning found me slumped over my breakfast pastries at a (thankfully quite interesting) discussion on the future of the High Level Task Force on the Future of the ICPD, of which DSW’s Executive Director Renate Baehr is a member. With the task force winding up later this year, participants were working through ideas about what might come next, and how regional cooperation can continue to advocate for SRHR in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Bum note

What was, for me, the first bum note of the conference followed in the next plenary session. Ostensibly on the subject of investing for girls and women, the conversation veered off into a discussion on the merits of technological advance as a possible panacea (a slight exaggeration on my part) to what are complex issues. I am probably not doing the discussion justice, and women do stand to benefit enormously from improved connectivity but the focus on the potential contribution of the telecoms industry and the exhortations of Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Foundation that we should all seek to be entrepreneurs and not employees sat ill with a conference that has not shied away from difficult questions to do with rights and uncomfortable subjects. Consider me a technological agnostic (unlike the Danish Minister who joined the panel).

It didn’t help that the panel’s composition was heavily skewed towards men, a situation that did not go unremarked upon online.

The rest of the day was largely filled with youth-related events. I managed to hang around – do young people still say that? – the Youth Zone for an extended period of time, talking to the Women Deliver Young Leaders and World Contraception Day Ambassadors. I also felt all of my soon-to-be 30 years. The confidence, poise and public-spirited nature of the young leaders here never ceases to impress and, as you’ll here in my conversation with Marianne of the Gates Institute below, left me questioning what I have been doing for the last decade.

WCD Ambassadors

I had a chance to sit down with one of the Women Deliver Young Leaders, who has since gone on to become a WCD Ambassador. Mary works in Kenya – where she is from originally – and the United Arab Emirates – where she lives, in Dubai – to promote family planning and contraceptive use in young people. Unfortunately, as you will hear in the second interview in the link below, my battery cut out before I could finish the interview and we weren’t able to find each other to finish it later in the day. Prepare to fail, etc.

The WCD Ambassadors Project – launched by Bayer and Women Deliver – equips young people with the skills they need to collect and share digital stories about young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), particularly access to contraception in their home countries. The project includes a storytelling and digital media training, a $5,000 seed grant, and advocacy opportunities for the Ambassadors to showcase their work at the international level. Hence Mary’s presence at Women Deliver.

120 under 40

Promotion of youth leadership and youth activism on SRHR and family planning is a recurring theme in Copenhagen this week, and I spoke with Marianne Amoss of the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health about their new initiative 120 under 40. The new programme, launched together with Bayer, highlights the achievements of the next generation of family planning leaders worldwide. It is till taking nominations (anyone under 40 active in FP) until May 22, and in our chat Marianne encouraged people to get nominating! Take a listen.

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Stray observations

Pastries – I am too full of pastries. The croissants may be free but I am still paying for them.

Women Deliver is a little like Las Vegas – lots of people cooped up in an airless hangar with little natural light and encouragement to go outdoors. The obvious difference being that super-enthusiastic advocates for gender equality and women’s rights have replaced vacationing gamblers. For the better!