The Last Day of the WPSP Training Program

Sorry everyone for being MIA for the last few days.  I had to travel from DC to Boston, pack, and then fly from Boston to San Diego…and had to rush to finish a final paper!  But I am back and will be posting more in the next few days about my thoughts on the conference.  I wanted to, first, quickly recap my last day at the conference in DC.

The very last day of the emerging leaders training program of the State Department’s Women in Public Service Project (WPSP) was bittersweet. We were proud of the work we had done and the things we learned, but were sad to leave each other.

Though the first day we discussed the barriers that women need to overcome to be more visible in public service, the last day focused on action plans we could implement when we returned to our countries and communities. Many women discussed creating caucuses or coalitions of women in their parliament, others mentioned creating education plans to implement in local schools to teach young girls about the options available to them, others made plans for a database of women qualified for public service jobs (Christine Lagarde mentioned she has this!), while others thought that social media campaigns could help to show women that they are welcome in jobs of public service.

What are my plans? I plan on using social media (like this blog!) to target student populations to inform young women that they are just as qualified as men to participate in positions of leadership.  I also plan on mentoring Wellesley College First-years (what we call FreshMEN because there are no men) and Sophomores about how they can become involved in public service.

I say that the day was bittersweet, though, because we ultimately had to leave and say goodbye to each other.  In the two days that we worked together at the program, we had formed bonds and became good friends…united by working towards a common goal.  Even though I was just student attending, all of the delegates treated me as if I was one of them.  Rangita de Silva de Alwis, from Wellesley Centers for Women and the woman who organized the entire training program, even told me I had to write that I was also an “emerging world leader” or she would comment with it on the blog! haha

Luckily, our conversation from the training program has not stopped and we have been sharing ideas over an email group and a group on Facebook.  Hopefully, this conversation will never stop and, eventually, we can bring the issue out of our Facebook group and into mainstream society.

P.S. So what will you do to promote women in public service positions? Any thoughts?

posing before saying goodbye to my new friends, emerging women leaders from around the world