Janis Alton accompanied by her mentee Kasha Slavner were our guest speakers last week.
Janis Alton: National Board Member Canadian Voice of Women for Peace Janis is a long-time activist in the domestic and international peace movement focused on the demilitarization, delegitimization of war, and the inclusion of women directly in all decision-making processes of peacebuilding from conflict prevention to reconstruction.Kasha Slavner: Multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker, photographer, entrepreneur and social justice advocate for over a decade. She was only 16 years old when she traveled the world for six months to make her feature documentary The Sunrise Storyteller. She is a 7x UN Youth Delegate with The Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and the Ontario Regional Advisor for the newly formed Canadian Council of Young Feminists.
Janis Alton- focus of her talk – The activites that are being done to improve the status of women
Impressed with Rotary’s involvement with the UN’ status of women, speaker gave an overview on the history of the status of women in UN acknowledging the beginnings with Eleanor Roosevelt and Helen Tucker from Canada that was instrumental in the creation and work of Voice of women. This organization continues to be instrumental in working through the UN to advance strategies in the advancement and progress of women in the 12 critical areas of concern. Specially mentioned is the issue of the girl child. As an affiliate the Voice of Women team continues to work with international organizations on the critical areas of concerns. The question remains is the focus of the international organization on the UN for improving the status of Women making a difference: Yes. The speaker has mentioned that the security council passed a “Landmark resolution on Women, Peace and Security Resolution 1325 urges all actors to increase the participation of women and incorporate gender perspectives in all United Nations peace and security efforts” this was crafted by women and was adopted with consensus by the UN. Also mention was made that Canada has developed 2 plans of action as to how our country can moves things forward with the women’s Peace and Security agenda. Including the appointment of a domestic ambassador for women’s; Peace and security focus Jaqueline Oneil.
While there is progress the speaker wanted to point out that we still have a concern with economic disparity, violence against women and the educational gap that women experience.
We are invited to check out article on the commission of the status of women “https://www.unwomen.org/en/csw”
Kasha Slavner , film maker and mentee was introduced to the group as a young woman working on exposing the status of women, and active member of V of W since the age of 14 ( she is now 23), she is passionate about making a difference in the world and affecting change with respect to violence against women, she wanted to create a platform using her skill as a photographer to create a film that would show the uniqueness and creativity that was being expressed to make positive change in parts of the world with limited resources
Kasha’s film received about 29 awards see below for links to her work:
To learn more about Kasha’s work visit her websites at https://www.1point5degreesofpeace.com & https://www.theglobalsunriseproject.com
Kasha mentioned the systemic issues of peace and climate justice that is not getting mainstream media attention, her passing thought the liberation of earth the liberation of women and the liberation of all humanity is the next step in peace that we all have to work towards,