International Women’s Day is celebrated on 8th March each year. The theme for this year is ‘Make it Happen!’
Last Friday I went to an International Women’s Day event at The Pavilion, Kiama.
The decision to go was made months ago because I know the three women who organized the event; two of them are good friends. I wrote the date in my diary not having a clue who was going to be speaking and bought my ticket with the same detachment.
I arrived at The Pavilion on Friday and as there were many people that I knew I was busily chatting and catching up on people’s lives. We stood in a circle and introduced ourselves, it was great to be able to put faces to names. But what I was ‘blown away’ with is the diversity of the businesses women have, and that their businesses all give back to the community in some way.
When we walked into the main venue I was ‘blown away’ by the table decorations, the colours, the energy of the room. Our goody bags were filled to overflowing and a beautiful diary was sitting on top of each place setting.
I sat at a table next to two women I had never met before and quickly learned about them, and their place in the business world. I know from the clients that I see that we all have a story and our story, when shared, can have a profound affect on those who hear it.
Lunch was made by a very talented local woman. Everyone at my table commented on how delicious it was. I have been lucky enough to taste her food before and it certainly was a mouth-watering experience.
The first speaker Melissa Browne is an accountant, CEO of two businesses and an author. Her goal is to empower women by changing the relationship they have with finances. Melissa got my attention, and what she had to say gave me a completely different view of why I need to be more aware of my finances. It’s so I can have ‘More Money for Shoes’, which is the name of her book.
The second speaker was an optometrist. I have met quite a few optometrists in my time but this young lady is far from an ordinary optometrist. Her parents are refugees from Cambodia and she was their ‘hope’ child. Because of that she was aware from a very young age of the concept of gratitude and it has served her very well. She didn’t learn to speak English until she was 6 years old, imagine. When just out of uni at age 22 she opened her first optometry shop (she now has 3) and later she founded Vision Cambodia. Her story is amazing and a very powerful lesson in the power of our beliefs. She didn’t grow up with an attitude of entitlement she grew up with an attitude of gratitude and ‘make it happen’
There was not one woman in that room on Friday that doesn’t have an impact on the world.
They may not do ‘things’ in quite the same way as Dr Susan Ang or Melissa Browne, but in their own way they impact everyone that comes into contact with them.
Raising children is a job that for many years has been seen as a ‘non-job’. A hiccup that takes women out of the workforce for a time and puts their career on hold, sometimes never getting back ‘in the groove’ on their return.
Those in power do not usually recognise that mothering is the hardest job in the world, and also the most important. The impact we have on the next generation is greater than any other influence, even if sometimes that is not outwardly obvious.
Every woman has the ability to ‘make it happen’. Every woman does ‘make it happen’ ~ in her own way, in her own world.
All of the people who were involved in the event at The Pavilion used their creativity, their skills to pull together an amazing event. They worked together and in doing so achieved more than one person alone.
I came away from that lunch with not just my belly full. My mind and heart were full too. I was blown away with how powerfully awesome we women really are. We do ‘make it happen’, every single day. Each woman there makes it happen in a different way but they still ‘make it happen’. Individually we each make an incredible impact.
And I got to thinking …
what if we each joined together to ‘make it happen’. Just imagine what we could achieve.
‘Be the change you want to see in the world’ is what Mahatma Gandhi urged us all those years ago.
‘Make it Happen’ is the catch cry of this year’s International Women’s Day.
If each and everyone of us wrote down those two phrases, put them somewhere prominent and used them as our mantra for the next twelve months ….. just imagine what we could achieve.
It’s time!
Because we women are truly awesome …
and if we join together we could conquer the world!
