Dorjsumiya  Yondonperenlei , President of SI Ulaanbaatar Club, Mongolia (2014-2016)

Before sharing my
experience of CSW59 in New York, I would like to express my deep gratitude
for SISWP for granting me a scholarship and giving me an opportunity to attend
such a great international event – hearing and learning from others.  This is my first
experience of being involved in a high level global event addressing  women’s issues.  This week many women  from all corners of the world are gathering at the United Nations in New York discussing and giving their voices to the current
implementation of  Beijing
+20 review.  I intended to join those
sessions referring to SI missions.

"Today is my second
day of attendance at  CSW59. So far  I have attended several interesting  sessions including the SI Advocacy Workshop; Asia and Pacific Caucus;
Present but Invisible: It is Time to 
hear our stories; Empowering
Youth leadership in the
movement to end Violence against Women;
and Ensuring Climate Justice Towards a Just and Healthy Planet.

 

Photo: Dorjsumiya Yondonperenlei at an interactive session at ‘Voices from the Grassroots: A life course approach to to Economic Empowerment’.

"I would say
that the SI advocacy workshop was very practical and useful
to me and I learned what  the role of advocacy is and how we can effectively put this into practice.  As for the Asia and Pacific Caucus,  it was good to find out about what 
the major and very common issues of
women currently  are in this particular region, and
in what ways NGO s and women’s organisations can tackle them.  Importantly, I now understood how the United Nations
System works and the links with NGO committees.

 

Photo:  Nisha Ghosh, SI Pune Metro East at ‘Present But Invisible’ SI Parallel event

"The third session I attended was
really  touching and inspiring as it looked at how
ladies in Nigeria and India overcame the
challenges of domestic violence; discussing the restricted right to possess property after a spouse/husband’s
death. It showed, with the help of SI project work, how impressively these ladies became Soroptimists and have gone on to contribute to their communities. Although they faced a hard life, they
overcame this and eventually made changes necessary in their lives. This inspired me a lot.

The next SI session, ‘Uniting our Voices against Violence: a bottom up approach to equipping women & girls in their communities’, was
also very  interesting because young ladies shared their
views and experience of advancing youth, in particular young boys awareness of
violence against women, suggesting
several interesting ways to take action. They  suggested hosting art events such as dance and music, attracting youth through the  use of social media and calling for  local school campaigns, in order to spread the
word about  domestic violence and violence against women among them.

To sum up, I got something
new from all sessions and I am very happy to
be able to share this with others and put some of these ideas into practice in my own context".