 Chair - Doris Hall
(Committee: Doris Hall, Chair, Barbara Hall, BC; Rhonda Perks, ON;
Susan Dill, ON; Julie McSorley, NB)
For this biennium, the focus of the Programs and
Projects Committee is to increase awareness and knowledge of the many (20)
fantastic projects that have been launched and managed by Project Five-0 around
the world. BPW International, along with the International Federation of
University Women, Zonta International, Soroptimists International and the
International Council of Women launched Project Five-0 in 1980 to provide
training courses in income-generating skills, marketing, small business
operations, accompanied by training in health, nutrition, hygiene, child care
and literacy.
In the beginning, the funds to support these
projects was raised through UNESCO and other UN agencies. Since then,
Soroptimist International has spearheaded the major portion of fundraising to
continue the projects. It is time for the other four organizations to do their
part in supporting these amazing projects.
I have prepared a
5-O Projects Summary (Word)
listing all the projects or visit the Project Five-O web-site at
www.project-five-o.org/conference05/anniversary25.htm.
This topic makes a great presentation for
international night and fulfils the requirement in the by-laws to have one
meeting per year about BPW International. If anyone wishes to make a Powerpoint
presentation, I have prepared one which I can send to your club. When you talk
to prospective new members and tell them about the work that the organization
does around the world, they are impressed. It is also an excellent piece of
information to share to promote BPW to the general public.
In 1999, BPW Cambridge, Ontario
submitted a resolution to the BPW Congress in Vancouver asking for recognition,
an apology and compensation for the “comfort women” of Japan.
After much debate and negotiations, a form of the resolution
was passed. It was presented again
in a different format to the BPW Congress
in 2002 in Melbourne, Australia. Recently,
the attached article
(Canada’s House Subcommittee OKs ‘Comfort Women’ Motion - WORD)
came to my attention. I am sharing
it with you to provide you with recent information on the topic and to reiterate
that there is still lots of work that we, as members of BPW, need to do to
encourage our governments to meet its obligations under the Convention on the
Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) which it signed
25 years ago.
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