March 8th marks International Women’s Day and to celebrate this special day, the MyHealth team attended an event at the Beck Theatre in Hayes, hosted by the Hillingdon Women’s Centre, for an educational day of talks, activities, workshops and networking.
The theme for International Women’s Day this year was Equity – which recognizes that each person has different circumstances, and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome. International Women’s Day also serves to highlight the achievements that women have made. Fittingly, the event started off with a fashion show by the Austin Sewing Club – a group of women from differing cultures and backgrounds, who find friendship and purpose through the club - who modelled some of the beautiful outfits they had made.
Following on from this, our very own MyHealth’s Emily and Dr Pritti Vaghani got the audience participating in a breast cancer and menopause awareness quiz – entertainingly titled, 'Who Wants to be a Hillingdonaire'. It was a great way to get everyone involved and thinking about the subjects, both of which we run free workshops on.
Next up was independent theatre producer Hannah Farley-Hills, who spoke about her current project to get women talking about their unique experiences of sex, which will then be turned into a play.
Councillor and Hillingdon Mayor, Becky Haggar, then took to the podium to give an interesting insight into her experiences as a woman, and what International Women’s Day means to her.
The day also affords us the chance to highlight what still needs to be done to create a more gender-equal world – which was something that the next two groups to the stage illustrated in two powerful performances. Children from Norbury Primary School in Harrow spoke about how children’s voices need to be heard in the fight for women’s rights, then the Afghan Women’s Support Group gave a reading about the challenges that women in Afghanistan face and how we can bring women together.
Lunchtime provided attendees with the time to visit the many stall holders lining the foyer from the local community, including the Hillingdon police service, Home-Start, EACH, Hillingdon Libraries, Centre for ADHD and Autism Support, Hillingdon Mind, P3 Navigator, H4All, Dash, Learn Hillingdon, Somali National Helpline, and the Carers Trust.
The MyHealth team were out in force manning our stall, from which we were able to give out lots of information about our free workshops. Several attendees enquired about our menopause workshops, with a common theme being that they feel they don’t get much information about menopause symptoms – underlining just how much our workshops fill this vital gap.
We were proud to be a part of what proved to be an inspiring and informative day celebrating women’s successes.
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