Blog by Sharon Fisher, Immediate Past President, Soroptimist International.

“In the spirit of sharing the work of Soroptimist International and how we eradicate poverty and hunger and achieve wellbeing and decent work we were invited to participate with other NGOs in a collaborative session during the Commission on Social Development.  Civil society leaders from numerous organisations met and introduced our organisations, our mission, and our work, a new idea during the Commission.

The goal of the session was to foster the spirit of partnership and connection among civil society by using break-out rooms to exchange ideas, experiences, and good practices with the objective of producing concrete outputs in the form of webinars, statements, blogs, or new projects.

The goal was to strengthen the capacity of each NGO and create visibility of their mission which for Soroptimist International it is women and girls.  I described the concept of the last appeal, Road to Equality, where we used the knowledge of 6 areas creating barriers to equality and human rights.  The Road to Equality moved the words into action through partnerships with grass roots partners.  The conversation created in our breakout group was to address the gap in advocacy knowledge from local communities to our global advocacy and the need to educate people on the core issues so their conversations could be intentional with advocacy.

The breakout room I was assigned to, included several familiar faces from organisations we collaborate with frequently and some new faces that I had not met before.   The group included Bhai, Lady of Good Shepard, Unanima and an Immigration organisation from Nigeria.

Each one of us provided an example to share.  I shared our Romanian Migration project as it was a tangible example of creating a sustainable livelihood, well being for the women and girls, and dignity for all.  Additionally, the project will eradicate poverty and hunger as we strive to achieve the 2030 Agenda.

The breakout group agreed to continue our communication to create a Best Practice document to share with the NGO Commission on Social Development.

It was noted that sharing across generations was critical as it is not all about just younger persons or just older advocates working in silos; combining them provides experience, financial knowledge, passion, and energy.  We are so much stronger together and therefore must engage in partnerships to move our advocacy forward.”