In this week’s SoroptiVoice blog, International Programme Director Hilary Ratcliffe introduces the SI Global Impact Report 2012-13, launched today. Read the report at: www.soroptimistinternational.org/impact 

We are a Global Voice for women and girls and this Global Impact Report demonstrates and showcases our voice. Through over 80,000 of our club members in 127 countries worldwide working on projects of all kinds we are able to pull information together for this report. This grass roots activism gives us the right and credibility to speak out. Our work is then used by representatives that we have at six UN centres around the world in New York, Rome, Vienna, Paris, Geneva and Nairobi. There our representatives can use this information to show what we do. This enables them to speak at meetings, add our voice to statements and to really try and make a difference for women and girls around the world.

One part of our work is to try and eliminate violence against women and girls. This was the main focus of the meeting in New York in the spring – The Commission on the Status of Women. We attended that meeting with a strong delegation and were able to affect the final outcome document- certainly to make sure that there was one. We also spoke out about femicide in a main session. This we were able to do because of our on-the-ground project work, advocacy and lobbying.

Through our focus on “Educate, Empower and Enable” we are changing gradually how women are treated and this becomes even more important as we move into what is being called the post-2015 era. The Millennium Development Goals agreed by governments come to an end in 2015. Change has happened and many positives have been achieved. Not least that human rights are now seen as women’s rights. We have a Deputy Secretary General of UN Women and much good work has been done to improve the lives of women and girls.

But we must not stop now. There is still much to do and particularly to get all governments to recognise gender as key in its planning and decision making processes.

This report gives us the ammunition to go forward and ask that these issues be addressed, so that the Post 2015 world will be a better place for women and girls. I commend this report to you all. Read it, use it, and make sure our voice is truly a Global Voice.

Read the Global Impact Report 2012-13