Designer Diane von Furstenberg, ExxonMobil Foundation and Vital Voices Global Partnership celebrated International Women's Day yesterday with the launch of Women Can, a campaign to empower women to become leaders in developing countries and emerging democracies around the world and to promote awareness of the benefits of global investments in women.
Each of the founding partners of the Women Can campaign — including the advertising agency Euro RSCG and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina — described its significant commitments to expanding women's leadership by offering expertise and financial support to help inspire, train and raise the profile of emerging women leaders around the world. Maria Pacheco, a Guatemalan social entrepreneur who has benefited from Vital Voices’ training programs, thanked the partners for recognizing that women can be “prime movers” in alleviating poverty in their countries.
As part of the celebration, profits from sales at all Diane von Furstenberg retail stores around the world, and from all sales on her Web site, www.dvf.com, will be donated to Vital Voices, an international NGO devoted to increasing the number and visibility of women leaders.
The launch of the Women Can campaign took place at the von Furstenberg studio in New York, the city that was the site of the landmark march in 1908 that led to the creation of International Women's Day in 1911. "As we celebrate a strike by women laborers in New York City 100 years ago, we are hoping to spark another chain reaction through the Women Can campaign that will lead to a series of investments in women's leadership," said Melanne Verveer, Co-Founder and Chair of Vital Voices.
"Educating and training women and girls can provide powerful, long-lasting economic, health and social benefits throughout the developing world," said Lorie Jackson, head of ExxonMobil's Educating Women and Girls Initiative. ExxonMobil Foundation has invested more than $11 million in this initiative since 2005 in the developing countries in which it operates. Projects include leadership and business skills development, teacher training, school construction and rehabilitation and mobilizing community support for girls’ education. In 2008, ExxonMobil Foundation launched a $1.5 million project with Vital Voices to empower women in Africa to become leaders in business and public life and to be effective advocates for removing key impediments to social and economic advancements for women. ExxonMobil Foundation is also investing in research to evaluate a wide range of leadership training projects for women in the developing world and identify best practices.
"When I first met Vital Voices, I was immediately moved, touched and inspired. I believe all women are strong, but sometimes they don't have the opportunity or the environment to show their strength or to let it out," said Diane von Furstenberg. Both Carly Fiorina and David Jones, Global CEO of Euro RSCG, spoke about research that shows the value of international investments in women to communities and countries, as well as to the companies for which they work.