Attending the International Women's Day at DWC

Dubai Women’s College celebrated today at the 23 of March 2011 the 100 anniversary of the International Women’s Day with the presence of more than 200 international females students from several colleges and schools and pioneers of successful ladies in the community. The opening ceremony started with the national anthem of the UAE, followed by her Excellency Najla Al Awadi’s opening speech the former member of parliament of the UAE.She mainly talked about the vital role of women in the Arab region and their great achievements in the community. It was one of the most inspirational speeches I have ever listened to. She really encouraged us to take part at our society’s workforce, since the Arab countries suffered from the lack of women’s participation, which caused serious affects in countries’ development.

Furthermore she mentioned a lot of unexpected statistics about the topic of women empowerment in the GCC countries. One of the most shocking facts was that the UAE has the highest rate of universities’ females graduates in the Arab world.Yes, it was shocking because the rest part of the fact states that although the UAE has the highest rate in educating females , yet these educated females half of them are not participating in the UAE community. It was slightly disappointing to hear that, however, her Excellency inspired us with her motivating words by emphasizing the powerful role of females’ existence in the community today.

Many great and successful leaders around the world are females, and that’s not because of their gender, but because of their hardworking, determination and their willing to learn from mistakes. In fact, such leaders have gone through a lot, and they discerned deeply that there is numerous challenges are waiting for them. However their desire and passion for their countries eased their path toward success as with every challenge comes an opportunity. This is what we have to acknowledge ourselves as Emirati students during our life journey to get prepared and not fail.

She also cleared out how we can contribute to the society, and be part of women’s empowerment solutions at this period of our life in the college. Even if we have no jobs right now that we can give back to our society through them, we can contribute effectively by our determination to get educated and grow up with the willingness to participate.

Furthermore, she gave us inspirational advice on how to spread the awareness of women’s empowerment issue. First she stated that this issue must be adopted firstly at our homes in early ages, because people should educate their children about genders rules and issues.

Secondly she stressed out on the importance of getting educated, as education has no limits. Students should know that no matter how far you get educated, there is always something to learn. Education is a life journey and it never ends.

At last she emphasized on the importance role of social media in spreading awareness about women’s issues. Thus, we should take advantage and use them not only to tweet or update our friends with what we do or eat, yet we should spread our useful messages and disseminate females raised issues and solutions.

The second activity was the panel discussion that talked about celebrating 100 years of women achievements. The panelists were very well known females leaders in their successful life, naming:

1-Nima Abu Warded : Presenter of the BBC news weekly financial  program, Founders & CEO of cashy.me

2- Deanna Othman: Country general manager, Premium Banking

3-Ginnie Carlier

4-Latifa Fikri: Vice president and product marketing in E-Vision, Etisalat, and President of DWC Alumnae Association

5-Nicholle Kingsley

6-Manal Omar

The panelists discussed a lot of very beneficial issues, and raised thoughts about their obstacles and life challenges throughout their path toward success. Those challenges revolves around families traditions and strict rules for females, the ability to balance between their jobs and families, the tendency to get forgotten in organization and accepting negative feedbacks.

They talked about how important it is to learn how to negotiate our families in order to accomplish goals that might be misunderstood by our families. We don’t have to overlook our tradition, or disobey our parents, but we have to learn how to raise useful discussion that can result by us contributing to the community as we aimed for.

Latifa Fikri talked about her challenges in getting balanced between her family, job and personal life. She motioned that even though she got divorced in an age of 17 with one daughter, and joined the college at that age she tried so hard to manage her priorities. Now, in despites of all the life difficulties she faced, she is one of the successful female leaders in the UAE.

After the panel discussion ended, we went to attend our favorite part of the event, the social media workshop with Emiratweets group. We met the three females co-founders of the first Emirati online social entity that created a community for the Emirati by the Emirati. They mainly highlighted their ambitions aims and goals, their starting journey; famous events they organized and how social media helped them to reach their goals. They emphasized on how vital the social media has become in our local community, and how it helped them to achieve their goals. Furthermore, they strongly recommended us to get in touch with as much as social media platforms we can like tumbler, Face book, twitter and flickr to manifest our Emirati identity on social media.

Overall, it was such a great idea to attend the event for we got so inspired and enthused by many successful stories and leaders. Surprising facts and statistics, inspiring personalities and beneficial advice all of these factors encouraged me to embrace my feminine identity in the society, work harder and dream way further to accomplish my goals. I will always remember the remarkable event with its guest speakers, and get inspired by those role models in my life.