2000 EVENTS

Women’s Leadership Forum:
Creating Connections
Peace with Sister, Self, and Society
April 28-29, 2000

The second year of the BRC’s two-year focus on nonviolence included a successful Creating Connections Women’s Leadership Forum. This was a two-day celebration of sisterhood across generations developed as part of the BRC’s ongoing emphasis on Women’s Leadership. It built on the success of the 1998 Creating Connections Women’s Leadership Forum and was planned by a group consisting of 40 women and girls from over 20 co-sponsoring organizations.

Among many objectives of the two-day event, the opportunity to network across generations and a chance for experienced women to provide support for young women’s leadership were the most important. As one of the planners said, "We want to help participants see the urgent need to work for peace and women’s rights—things don’t get better unless we all work to make something happen."

To view a scrapbook of images from our 2000 events visit our 2000 EVENTS PHOTO GALLERY

Friday Evening: Sharing and Celebrating

Themes of unity, sisterhood, trust, and peace were celebrated with performances of poetry, music, and dance. During dinner, women shared their reactions to the quotes they found most inspiring from an exhibit in the reception area. A keynote address was delivered by Jacqueline Maloney, coordinator of Education for Action at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, in which she urged participants to "Be. Do. Have" rather than "Have. Do. Be."

Saturday Workshops

Workshops were chaired by many well-known women leaders affiliated with leading Boston educational organizations, including Susan Bailey, executive director of the Wellesley Centers for Women; Aparna Vijayaraghavan of the Radcliffe Public Policy Center; and Elizabeth Sherman of the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy of the University of Massachusetts (Boston). Susan Shaer, president of Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND), and Sayre Sheldon, founder of WAND, also chaired Saturday workshops which formed the substance of the "Creating Connections" experience. Workshop topics:

•     Woman as Peacemaker, Healer, and Visionary
•     If Women Ruled the World or, So You Want to Be President
•     A Strategy for Telling Women’s Stories
•     Bridging the Gap: The Art of Interactive Group Facilitation
•     The Personal is Political and the Global is Personal
•     Creating Autobiographical Poems: A Strategy for Telling Women’s Stories
•     Responses to Violence Against Women
•     Her War Story: A Multi-faceted View
•     What is Your Power Pose?
•     Inside the Chrysalis: A Workshop Focused on Making Decisions and Creating Meaning During Times of Transition

Sponsoring Organizations

Click Here to Download a PDF File of the Conference Report

To receive a copy of the Creating Connections Conference Report in the mail, please call 617-491-1090, Ext. 234 or email us at pubs@brc21.org.