by Debbie Ross
Womens Travel Network founder
Celebrating International Women’s Day in Jaipur, India
On March 8th women around the world celebrated International Women’s Day. This year a group of Canadian women traveled to India to take part in an interactive session on “Women Beyond Borders” A special thank you to our friends in India for arranging this fabulous event;
Mr. Balu Menon, Managing Director of Worldwide Adventures, India
Ms. Neeta Boochra, President of FICCI Ladies Organisation
Ms. Apra Kuchal, Chairperson FICCI
Mr. Shiv Pratap, tour guide with Worldwide Adventures, India
Ashok Club for opening their doors to us and arranging a fabulous event and a delicious dinner.
We started the evening getting ready for this momentous event by dressing in colourful saris. Not knowing how to dress in a sari we had to call upon two lovely ladies from the community to help us. Thank you for making us look well dressed in our beautiful saris and thank you to Worldwide Adventures for the generous gift of the saris.
Our gracious hosts presented us with exquisite scarves, a book “Light Lamps” and a cake cutting ceremony to kick off the celebrations.
The evening program included a host of guest speakers.
Two of our Canadian women spoke to the group of International women.
Susan Sommers, Marketing & Media specialist and author spoke about embracing your passion, purpose and power at every age.
Rowena Lamy, Senior Program Manager at Royal Bank of Canada spoke about the multitude of influences that shape the choices we make in our personal and professional lives.
Neeta Boochra, President of FICCI and executive director of Silver Centrre Indo Gem Expoorters spoke about the important role that FICCI takes in educating young women and assisting entreprenuers and business women in becoming successful.
Apra Kuchaal, FICCI chairperson spoke about the importance of educating the children; girls to respsct themselves and boys to respect the girls. She stressed the point that this must begin at home and in the schools with teachers, mothers and fathers demonstrating this respect and teaching it to their children.
We listened to many passionate speakers talk about the need for change in India and we had indepth discussions with the respected individuals from the community of business women and entrepreneurs. Some of the ladies attending were; Thakur Singh, managing director of Hotel Diggi Palace, Shalini Sheoran advisor, Kavita Verma director of DISHA a school for children with multiple dissabilities and Surrendra Singh, director Rajasthan Institute fo Co-Op Education & Management.
The following day we were thrilled to see our event made it onto the front page of the local Jaipur news. This was a milestone event focusing on the issues of women around the world and everyone involved is committed to making changes to improve the lives of women globally.