My name is Barbara Kasumu and I am the founder of the Visible Women (VW) Campaign, set up with the aim of raising aspirations and promoting mentoring opportunities for young women and girls, while putting the spotlight on role models and mentors, sharing their success stories, through events, workshops and online engagement.
It’s not enough for the next generation to have only celebrities and reality TV stars to look up to. So this year’s International Women’s Day the campaign launched “I Am Visible” Week, which ran from March 4 to 10. The week attracted more than 450 attendees, who had the opportunity to hear from 36 inspirational women, across ten events, three workshops and a pop-up shop in Victoria.
For those unable to attend, the #IamVisible hashtag on Twitter made headlines, when VW was named a top tweeter for equality by The Independent, reaching 259,290 unique users over the course of the week.
Moving forward we will be planning to:
· run mentoring initiatives for sixth formers and university students
· hold more Twitter parties to raise awareness online
· launch a collaborative blog featuring news, interviews and guest contributors
· run quarterly events focusing on different industries and skills training
· hold a summer residential focusing on leadership, careers and confidence building
