FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ATHENS, WV February 27, 2001
AWARE (Advocates of Women for Action, Respect, and Education) is planning their second annual International Women's Day Parade and Celebration, Thursday, March 8, 2001 at Concord College. The group will begin festivities at noon in front of College Center and march on the sidewalks around Marsh Hall (administration building) to the plaza (between Marsh Hall and the Alexander Fine Arts Center) for a rally, which will conclude at 1:00 p.m. Workshops dealing with women’s health issues will then be held. Details for the workshops will be announced at a later date. The march is being held in conjunction with Women’s History Month and women’s groups worldwide are planning activities to call attention to safety issues for women, preventing sexual abuse and improving health care.
Dr. Carol Manzione, spokesperson for AWARE and a faculty member at Concord College, said the march “will celebrate the lives of ordinary and extraordinary women who have influenced and shaped our lives. The march will be a peaceful celebration of women’s past and present struggles and their hopes for the future, including equality and justice within political and cultural systems that have traditionally treated women as inferior to men.”
For more information on this event, please contact Dr. Carol Manzione at
1-304-384-5262 or manzionc@concord.edu.
-CC-
Concord College Notes (From the United Nations Department of Public Information): Few causes promoted by the United Nations have generated more intense and widespread support than the campaign to promote and protect the equal rights of women. The Charter of the United Nations, signed in San Francisco in 1945, was the first international agreement to proclaim gender equality as a fundamental human right. Since then, the organization has helped create a historic legacy of internationally agreed strategies, standards, programs and goals to advance the status of women worldwide. Over the years, United Nations action for the advancement of women has taken four clear directions: promotion of legal measures; mobilization of public opinion and international action; training and research, including the compilation of gender desegregated statistics; and direct assistance to disadvantaged groups. Today a central organizing principle of the work of the United Nations is that no enduring solution to society's most threatening social, economic and political problems can be found without the full participation, and the full empowerment of the world's women.