January 2017 News & Events
We had a very busy year in 2016. As well as many speaking engagements, Cafes and media interviews, we hosted the Grand Tea Party Cafe at Heritage Hall. We held workshops for NGOs on how to use "Advancing Equity and Inclusion a Guide for Municipalities" available on our website. At the UN Habitat III conference in Quito, Ecuador in Oct. 2016, Women Transforming Cities (WTC) and others, launched an international initiative called the Women Friendly Cities Challenge. This is an exciting new project for WTC and more information and updates will be up on our website soon, or come to the WTC café on Feb 8 to hear lots more. Upon request we have submitted a three year project proposal to Status of Women Canada with our partners CRIAW (Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women) and the cities of Vancouver and Surrey to examine systemic barriers to women's participation in local government. We will let you know the details as soon as we hear. Women Transforming Cities was part of an international coalition of women groups to engender the New Urban Agenda (NUA) of UN Habitat III, the urban blueprint of governments for the next 20 years. We spoke and delivered a workshop at the UN Habitat 3 Regional meeting for the EU/North America in Prague; In Quito we spoke at the Huairou Commission Grassroots Academy; we spoke on the Youth Hab LGTBQI panel; spoke at the World Urban Campaign panel on the Urban Thinkers Cafes; delivered the Queer Declaration to Dr. Joan Close the Executive Director of UN Habitat and worked with the Canadian government on a panel on how to include LGTBQI issues in the implementation of the NUA, and hosted the Women Friendly Cities Challenge Panel. We joined the Cities for CEDAW (Campaign for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women) teleconferencing call and will work with other organizations in Vancouver and cities around the world on this initiative. The Women Transforming Cities Facebook page has more details and other exciting actions globally. On Jan.21/17 We joined the Women's March on Washington-Vancouver and millions of women world wide. We feel empowered by the march which gave us strength, joy, clarity and unity to go into our work in 2017 - 18. We hope you will join us ! Let us know how we can work with you to use an intersectional lens on all our activities to make cities work for women and girls . info@womentransformingcities.org