WE Sri Lanka and Women for Rights International Women’s Day 2021 Virtual Festival
In celebration of International Women’s Day, Women’s Empowerment Sri Lanka joined hands with our sister organisation Women for Rights Sri Lanka to host an International Women's Day Virtual Festival on Sunday 7th March, 3-5pm GMT.
Over 80 participants joined in celebrating the achievements
of progressive women’s organisations across the world. We were joined by a number of inspirational women's organisations including Women United, Pengal Santhippu, The Worker’s Party of Britain and the South Asian Solidarity Group in a virtual celebration of activism, music, discussion, poetry and song this International Women's Day.
Project ‘Respect’
Project Respect was designed to bring about awareness on respect values and sexual health for young adults in Sri Lanka. We felt there was still prejudice amongst race, class, age, gender etc. therefore we hoped to re-instate our human values no matter the background. We were initially planning on collaborating with local organisations like us and holding 3-day workshops to meet our objectives. We were hoping to visit 10 areas including Jaffna, Kurunegala and Anuradhapura, over 3months. Unfortunately, with the current pandemic still ongoing, we decided to host virtual workshops instead. On the 27th of March, we held our 1st workshop to a group of 13–18-year-olds from Kandy.
Special thanks to our local host, Sunethra Wickremaratne for organising the registration and parental consent and our members, Tanya, Ranga, Sudharma, Lilly and Mel for their support and help. We had excellent feedback such as “It's a really interesting session with friendly environment. It gives us more opportunities to share our thoughts and to respect every person in the society.” We even had recognition and approval from a parent who works in the Education Department of Sri Lanka. We hope to continue with more virtual workshops in the future until we re-asses travelling to Sri Lanka.
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