EMPOWER

The Magazine of the International Women’s Academy Issue 1: Sept 2014

PAGE THREE Co-Founder’s Message Editor’s Message PAGE FOUR Club Exchange Update PAGE FIVE Voice of Women Competition PAGE SIX Club News CIWA Standing on Top of the World PAGE SEVEN Club Introduction – Intelligentxia PAGE NINE IWA Vacancies

The gruesome rape and hanging of two teenage girls in the populous Uttar Pradesh state again proves how women have become the biggest victims of India's sanitation crisis. The two girls were going to the fields to defecate when they went missing on Tuesday night. Nearly half-a-billion Indians - or 48% of the population - lack access to basic sanitation and defecate in the open. The situation is worse in villages where, according to the WHO and Unicef, some 65% defecate in the open. And women appear to bear the brunt as they are mostly attacked and assaulted when they step out early in the morning or late in the evening. A senior police official in Bihar said some 400 women would have "escaped" rape last year if they had toilets in their homes. Experts believe that India needs to scale up its war on sanitation with a special emphases on women. Read more at: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-27635363 IWA Student Editor

In this Issue

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In the News

www.iwa-education.com/empower-magazine.html

My plan when initiating IWA was always that the members, and especially the student members, took on all the leadership roles themselves. I always envisaged that it would be them that built IWA into a truly global organization with creative leadership at its heart. Indeed I am always convinced that for an organization to be truly creative it must embrace the ideas of the younger members and empower them to develop and lead these ideas. Over the past few months this plan has been taking shape with a number of roles being initiated and our first successes. In June of this year Jenna Jung from the IWA – YCIS Club in Shanghai took on the role of Student Creative Director, charged with marketing the IWA Clubs globally.

Already through her efforts to connect we have our first IWA Club in New York at Dwight International School. In addition Jenna will be presenting at a conference for girls schools in the UK in October and visiting a number of schools to advertise our activities. We are also expanding these marketing and global connection activities by creating a number of Country Ambassador roles to drive club development in local areas. These are being advertised in this issue of Empower and I encourage you to apply. Finally I must pass on my congratulations to our new Empower Magazine Student Editor, Madeleine Hoecklin from Connecticut in the US. What a fantastic first edition and again a wonderful indication of the creative power and imagination of our student members. I look forward to this magazine growing and becoming an integral part of the IWA organization.

Dr Peter Le Masurier IWA Co-Founder

There is a target that has been set to increase and improve global education: to ensure equitable and inclusive quality education and lifelong learning for all by 2030. By being involved in IWA, I believe we are involved in this global aim, that we are not only improving education, but also encouraging leadership, creativity and that we are empowering students globally involved in IWA. I am grateful to Dr Le Masurier, not only for the opportunity to have such a large role in the IWA magazine, but also for encouraging leadership. Already IWA has grown a lot larger in just a year, increasing the connections between students and schools and the projects created to fund-raise and support the cause. I am also grateful to the numerous students who joined IWA and are dedicated and committed to it and its cause. I believe the Empower Magazine will grow to be effective and beneficial in the IWA community. Madeleine Hoecklin IWA Student Editor

Co-Founder’s Message

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Editor’s Message

The Club Exchange has seen a number of big movements in the past few months. IWA-BMF scored 3000 points for its summer program in Guizhou, China. IWA- YCIS have been organizing business competitions and fashion shows to support their friends in CIWA Club in Ghana. One of our new clubs IWA Dwight from New York has already had a very successful music show in Shanghai and is now funding a student from our Africa Angels Hope and STEM Club in Tanzania. Ideal Women in Action Club from India has gained it’s first point for support given to a local school. Read about club projects on the Club Exchange Blogs.

Club Exchange Update

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www.iwa-education.com/club-exchange.html

Rachel Hanfling is an Emmy nominated TV Producer with 20 years of proven success producing for some of the world’s biggest names including Oprah Winfrey and Anderson Cooper. Johnny Fewings is a record and film industry veteran of over 36 years. Having been a VP at Universal Pictures International Entertainment, he now concentrates on movie production.

Voice of Women Video Competition

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www.iwa-education.com/voice-of-women-competition.html

WIN… Canon 70D digital camera for your IWA Club

Competition Judges

The Voice of Women competition has been initiated to give the women of the world a channel to be heard. We challenge all our club members to listen to, record and share the views, hopes and dreams of the most important people in their communities, women. In this way we can capture their voice and use this to shape, all our work.

We have two fantastic judges from the TV and movie industries who have kindly offered to give-up their time to view and judge the competition entries. It is not often you get the chance for your work to be noticed by such experienced, connected and talented individuals

Club News

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www.iwa-leaders.com/ciwa

Club News

IWA – Standing on Top of the World On the 26th of April, there was a dancing competition which was originated by Edie Gao. There were dance clubs from 6 different high schools in Suzhou involved in this competition and a dance group from Jiangyin. We also invited some students who were interested in singing to perform on the stage. The first place was Melissa and Carina from our school. The aim of this competition was to donate money to IWA and to help rebuild the houses for the girls who live in an underprivileged village in Guizhou province. We were able to donate 3,000 yuan from the competition.

CIWA-Ghana In the midst of fathers, mothers, pastors, imams, Christians, Muslims, I have never believed this world could be such a wicked place for children like us to live or struggle in. I thought childhood would leave me with sweet memories of parental love. To my shock, I was miserably wrong. My very brief family life has left me with a trail of tears and misery. My dad-if he deserves that title-swore heaven and hell that he was not responsible for my mom’s pregnancy. Mom quickly fled school and home out of shame and disappointment. In her helplessness I was born and quickly abandoned only to be picked up by some people and handed over to my ailing grandma. Five years later, she declared her inability to look after me since no word from my mother was ever heard. The best she could do was pawn me to fishermen on the Volta lake which was known to me as the big water in the eastern part of Ghana. When the truck finally landed us at the beach of the Volta lake in a lakeside village, all I heard from my grandmother was “This gentleman will send you to school to become a doctor, obey him. I will be back.” That was the end of her. Across the lake we docked five hours later. And for the next five years I tried committing suicide on several occasions.

Life on the lake as “diving boy” to extricate entangled nets was more than hell especially when done on empty stomach. My rescue and enrollment at Crossover was a miracle. My only regret is that it was when Dave was rescuing me that he was attacked by my task master and he lost his right eye. In spite of that, I remember that day as the day life began to shine on me. Though, we sleep most often than not on empty stomachs at Crossover International Academy, I am happier than any child. To transform my life totally, from the blue, to me, CIWA club was formed in Crossover and we together with the girls are reaping club was formed in Crossover and we together with the girls are reaping more benefits than any other club member. During last year’s famine, IWA clubs rushed to our saving and three square meals started landing on our plates. We were asked to think about business and our girls and some lady teachers bought beads and shipped them to IWA in China.

Before we vacated for summer, we were told that IWA-China, IWA Hong Kong and IWA USA are sending us enough money to purchase 25 computers, a projector and computer furniture. What a blessing! Who can deny that with IWA clubs around the world there is total transformation in the lives of over 200 vulnerable children. Which children will deny that IWA is the life of CIWA-Ghana. Now we at CIWA are positioned to achieve total emancipation through education and technology. IWA go! IWA go!!

www.iwa-leaders.com/standingontopoftheworld

Club Introduction

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www.iwa-leaders.com/wisintelligentxia

After much deliberation and brainstorming, we finally decided on our perfect logo, as seen on the right. The purple colour resembles the colour of WIS logo, while the light bulb represents our brainy effort to come up with great ideas to help the course of action. The choice of the human head in also not coincidental: although we focus on helping the young women, we acknowledge that the problem of above-mentioned problem of poverty is not gender-specific On the most recent of West Island School’s annual trips to Thailand, students worked together to help build Huay Pa Sang Library (as shown in the photos above and below). This was an incredible experience, allowing everyone to help give back to a less fortunate community. As well as building new facilities for the Thai school,

WIS Intelligentxia: Our Journey over the past year, Alexandra Churchill and Ella Fidler Statistics show that 48% of the world’s population is female, yet a vast number of them suffer from illiteracy. In Less Economically Developed Countries, the fight against poverty and racial discrimination is endless, leading to young women to be forced to drop out of school. Having been denied the chance for a proper education, their ambitions for a thriving future are condemned to come to an end. As they mature into adults, they are restricted to a life of constant struggle to earn just enough to make the ends meet. Fortunately, this is not always the case as every dark cloud has a silver lining. If there is a will there is a way. At WIS Intelligentxia, we believe that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. One of our first endeavours, although initially seemingly useless in our cause, was finding the right logo. Although a good logo would never (directly) assist girls and boys in learning their times tables, the hunt for a logo really helped us to establish who we are and what we want to achieve..

WIS students also helped out during lessons, teaching the younger kids and introducing them to a more Western approach to learning which means that students actively participate in discussions and “learn by doing”. To initiate our wonderful service back at “Headquarters” (WIS), the Intelligentxia team decided to raise money for individual girl’s education. Specifically, girls who cannot afford books, uniforms and let alone, school fees.

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www.iwa-leaders.com/wisintelligentxia

The goal of the site is to grant young ladies and gentlemen the access to Mathematics and English Resources that should greatly assist their chances of entry into high school. Usually, females (and a few males) drop out of school due to their families being unable to pay school fees anymore, having to take care of a sick relative, or not having the confidence to continue. But here at WIS Intelligentxia, we are working to empower them to believe in themselves and reach for their goals. Our online learning environment should help them realize that they are not alone. There are people out there who care and who will do their best to provide the necessary tools for them to achieve their dreams. Finally, we have decided to sponsor a young woman from Thailand, for whom we shall be paying all her education fees. As much as we would like to sponsor all the children, it is more realistic to begin with one. The goal of this incredible venture is to provide the necessary tools to be able to give a less fortunate child the opportunity and the confidence to attain the reality of her dream. In doing so, she can see that no matter what obstacle life hands her, there is always someone who cares.

And that is exactly how we here in WIS Intelligentxia feel. Although some may see what we are doing as typical charity work, it is not what we are about. We hope that through communication with the Thai students, we can broaden our horizons and learn a little bit about beautiful Thai culture that, for example, we teach the students English Grammar and they teach us some basic Thai phrases. We are not looking at this as doing them a favor, we are doing it in order to empower them to study hard and get the job that will help them to earn money for their family. And, as a plus, we get to meet new people and develop friendships. Here at WIS Intelligenxtia, we believe Knowledge is Power and as Nelson Mandela once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”.

One of our leaders, Mr. Mason, bought a large array of beautifully hand crafted jewelry, hats, key-chains and coin purses – skillful workmanship of women from the local Akka tribe. After several lunchtimes of meticulous planning and tedious sorting, Intelligentxia set up an ‘Akka Bazaar’ in the heart of West Island School’s annual school fair. With the attractive and vivid colours of our Akka merchandise catching the eyes of students, parents and teachers alike, sales were amazing and we were able to raise an amazing amount of profit. Now onto our biggest, on-going mission: A group of WIS Intelligentxia members have begun paving the pathway to helping the young female, as well as the unprivileged young male community in parts of Northern Thailand through Digital Literacy. In order to support the young minds of people looking to begin careers such as medicine or tourism, we have set up an Online Learning Environment.

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www.iwa-education.com/vacanies

IWA Country Ambassadors

The International Women’s Academy seeks creative and self motivated individuals to lead the drive of our IWA Club activities globally.

Visit our website to learn more and to submit your online application

Are you…

• Creative • Entrepreneurial • A confident communicator • Self motivated

IWA Country Ambassadors work within their own country to promote IWA Clubs at schools, universities and companies. This is a voluntary position but one which is crucial to the expansion of the IWA Club network.

The position offers fantastic opportunities to develop your marketing, communication and network building skills. You will work closely with our IWA Student Creative Director and the Co-Founder.

The role will particularly suit a high school or university student who is creative, entrepreneurial and self motivated Dr Peter Le Masurier IWA Co-Founder

EMPOWER

The Magazine of the International Women’s Academy Issue 1: Sept 2014

empower@iwa-education.com

The success of our Empower Magazine is dependent of our IWA Clubs contributions. So please can we ask for your kind support with…

• Articles about your club activities • Introductions to your clubs and club members • News stories that have captured your interest and imaginations • Ideas for projects • Events you would like to advertise • Support you would like to request from other members

Every article which is included in our Empower Magazine will gain your club 1000 points for your club exchange total. Please send all articles to our IWA Student Creative Director at the Empower email address below.