Women making a Difference : Tuesday 17th March at Invercarse Hotel
80 people attended this event organised by Dundee Soroptimists to mark International Women’s Day.
The three speakers were:
Karen McMillan from TARA, the Scottish support service for women who have been trafficked into and across Scotland.
Gwen Gordon, who is one of the two lead nurses in the Scottish Malawi Project to set up Accident and Emergency services in that Country. This project has been running since 2010 and is based in the Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi.
Sue Hope talked about the work of the Ann Gloag Foundation in setting up hospitals and clinics for the repair of fistula which result from young and /or complex pregnancies and is sometimes a consequence of FGM. The first hospital was set up in Sierra Leone and the service has been affected negatively by the Ebola outbreak.
15 feed-back forms were completed and all were very positive concerning all aspects of the meeting including the quality of the speakers, the friendly atmosphere, the venue, the sound system and the IT presentations.
It was a very successful evening.
Some quotes: ‘ Many of the problems addressed in these presentations are caused by poverty, war, climate change, poor education etc. The West need the political will to provide good role models and needs to confront these problems head on.’
‘need to raise awareness amongst men of the suffering of women.’
‘all topics were equally interesting and informative’
‘the organisers were willing to speak to people and offer additional information’
‘there should be talks like this in schools and universities to raise the awareness of young people and show them where they could help’.
Prue Watson
Press Officer