International Women’s Day is a day to celebrate the resilience of women, past, present, and future, and their tireless efforts to work for change. Every year, the Women’s Centre collaborates with community partners to host a community event to celebrate women in our community. This year’s theme asked women to, “Be Bold for Change” – to take transformative action in their lives to create change.
We received greetings from the City of Calgary by Councillor Carra, ate some delicious food and announced new programs happening at the Centre. We now offer child minding three times per week for women who use the Centre and have started our Artist in Residence Program in celebration of our 20th anniversary. This program features female artists based in Calgary who work to make a contribution both to women and Calgary’s arts and music community. Our first Artists in Residence are Kaely Cormack, Hayley Muir, and Kenna Burima. They started Calgary’s only feminist music and arts festival, Femme Wave, and have worked determinedly to “create an integrated, encouraging arts scene with opportunities for women and non-binary artists.” Their music was a natural fit to enjoy at our event as they shared their songs of resistance, hope, and empowerment. The Raging Grannies closed out the event with songs about social issues like child care to get us in an advocacy mood.
This year, the Women’s Centre worked with the Calgary and District Labour Council, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Public Service Alliance of Canada, and the United Food and Commercial Workers, to put on this great event. We had bread donations from COBS Bakery in Country Hills, fruit platters from Crowfoot Safeway, and gorgeous centre pieces from Red Rose Florist. Thank you to everyone who brought delicious food and volunteered your time to make this such a successful event.
Throughout the coming year, let’s remember that social change is accomplished by ordinary people, like me and you, engaging in consistent action over time. Women have made big and bold changes in our communities, cities and country – we can continue with this momentum to make the world a better and more equitable place.
This blog post was written by our practicum student, Blaire Christensen.