Women Economic Forum – Delhi

I was introduced to WEF by Venkat Matoory last year. The annual WEF last year was in May and I couldn’t attend as my mother-in-law was unwell and we were in Chennai. This year in Feb, I attended the WEF North East held in Guwahati. I was a speaker in two sessions.

The annual WEF was held in Delhi from the 26th of April till the 1st of May. I spoke on the “Economics of goodness and giving” on the 28th and was also awarded the “Women of excellence” plaque by Dr. Harbeen Arora.

Krishnan and I could attend only two days of the six as we had other commitments and had to pack for our upcoming “ShikshaDaan Yatra” to U.P and Bihar. But we picked up valuable lessons in these two days. On day one a lady from the US shared this statistic – women are 50% of the world population, 43% of the workforce and own 1% of the wealth !!! Think about that sisters. We work as much or more than the men and they own 99% of the wealth. Not a happy statistic.

Then we heard the life story of an African woman’s spirited fight against genital mutilation and her success in reducing it by 97%. How inspiring is that. I shared our life story of bankruptcy and the work we have done so far in ShikshaDaan …. if we thought we had problems, thinking of what some of these women have gone through makes bankruptcy look like a walk in the park. It has inspired us to do more with ShikshaDaan.

Here are some pictures from the event –

WEF is a wonderful opportunity to interact from women from all over the world. The only feedback that we could think of was to reduce the number of sessions and give the speakers more time as their life stories are very powerful motivators for everyone.

Looking forward to attending more WEF sessions in the future.