March 8 is the 2018 International Women’s Day, and we celebrate the many contributions of women to the history and progress of humanity.
Look around you. You may be sitting in your favorite chair at home. You may be in a bus or train on your way to work. Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, we would like you to take a moment out of your day to reflect on the immense impact women have had on the world around you.
Women are our politicians and our bankers, our baristas and our local grocery store clerks. They are the drivers of social revolutions and the innovators of countless developments in human history. They wake up in the morning and, like most of us, make some contribution, large or small, to the world we live in today.
On International Women’s Day, people around the world are uniting to celebrate the many contributions of women to the history and progress of humanity. At Global Heritage Fund, we would like to highlight the special place women have in the preservation of our world’s most special, vulnerable places.
At every one of our projects, we use our unique methodology to assess the best way to preserve, protect, and promote a site and its surrounding communities. Much of this work relies on the expertise of local women, both as partners and as stakeholders, whose perspectives inform and enrich our work. In fact, many of our projects would not be possible without the invaluable work of our Global Heritage Fund women.
50 percent of our project directors are women, and these talented contributors are the catalysts for our greatest successes. Contrary to many businesses in Silicon Valley, fully one-third of our board is female. In addition to our leadership, our many women staffers are vital to making GHF an effective force for global cultural heritage conservation.
We also make a special effort to empower some of the most vulnerable members of communities: local women. Our projects provide local women with the means to leverage their special places into tangible economic benefits. For the women of Dali Village in China, we are working with Studio ATLAS to build a co-op that will give them – and their beautiful textile arts – access to the international folk crafts market. In the rugged mountains of the Anti-Atlas in Morocco, we are partnering with Dr. Salima Naji and local communes to create venues around heritage sites for local products and terroir.
This International Women’s Day, we celebrate the unique voices and perspectives women bring to our organization. Here are some ideas of how you can host your own celebration:
- Patronize women-owned or -operated businesses
- Read women authors
- Talk (and more importantly, listen!) to women in your life
- Become a monthly supporter of an organization working to empower women, like Global Heritage Fund
We encourage you to make your International Women’s Day celebration a time of deep appreciation and contemplation for the achievements of women in your life and in the world, as we have. However you choose to celebrate, we echo the words of Chelsea Clinton: “Particularly at this moment, in 2018, when we have so many women who are raising their voices around the world, so many women here in the United States who are running for office, my message is thank you and we have to keep going.” Keep going, ladies!