International Women's Day

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March 8 is International Women's Day. IWD is a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future. You can learn all about its history and all the events planned for this year's celebration by clicking here. Two hundred and forty-four events are scheduled to take place in the UK, 175 in the USA, 156 in Australia, 28 in India, etc. Click here for a list of gender facts, such as, "Women use 20,000 words a day while men only use 7,000," and "Of 1.2 billion people living in poverty worldwide, 70% are women."

The well-being of women is central to the Millennium Development Goals, of course. Goal #3 is to promote gender equality and to empower women and #5 is to improve maternal health. In fact, women play at least an equal role in each of the goals. Since more women live in poverty and less women receive adequate formal education, the plight of women is central to the fight against global poverty.

CARE is an humanitarian organization that believes that working alongside poor women has the potential to lift whole families and communities out of poverty. Tomorrow evening, March 5, CARE and ONE will sponsor a grand event called A Powerful Noise Live. A Powerful Noise is a movie that follows three women from different countries who overcome seemingly insurmountable odds to bring lasting solutions to their communities. The movie will be followed by a a town hall discussion with Madeleine K. Albright, Natalie Portman, Nicholas Kristof, Christy Turlington Burns and Dr. Helene Gayle (President and CEO of CARE). Click here to get information on participating theaters and ticket information.

I'll be there tomorrow night and will blog about it afterwards. If anyone out there in the Jacksonville, FL area wants to meet up for it, send me an email.

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• Three different worlds. Three different women. ONE Powerful Film. (one.org)
• A Powerful ONE Night Event (one.org)