On Wednesday September 22, 2010 Vivanista brought together a lively group of powerful women at the Mashable/UN Foundation Digital Media Lounge in New York City to discuss how young women in developed countries can have a major impact on improving the lives of girls in developing countries.

The conversation was focused on the UN Millennium Development Goal of gender equality and empowerment of women and girls. Panelists challenged the power of America’s youth, shared breathtaking statistics on teen giving and pushed the audience both in person and online to ‘Get Pissed’ and start talking about these issues. The more people that are aware of global issues, the more difficult it is to brush them under the carpet. As Nancy Lublin put it “ There are 25,000 child brides a day. It’s time to stop having sweet panels and chats. Get pissed! This is unacceptable.”

Panel participants include (from left to right): Zainab Salbi, Founder of  Women for Women International, Nancy Lublin, CEO of DoSomething,Kimberly Perry, Director of  Girl Up, Nancy Zhang, International Trustee of  Key Club,  and Layne Gray, CEO of Vivanista.  Each member of the panel bring a wealth of experience and inspiration to both young girls and women. Read more about the panelists here >>

“Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation.” – Nelson Mandela

Layne Gray led the panel in a discussion to draw their insights and experiences. She explains. “As philanthropic women, we want to share our message and values with girls.”, by quoting Nelson Mandela, she asked the youngest member of the panel Nancy Zhang, to tell everyone what she thought it would take for America’s youth to be ‘That Great Generation’

The “What Girls Can Teach Women”  panel moderated by Layne Gray was one of the most inspiring of the conference, and we would like to share what her goals and outcomes were.

It was a privilege to be a contributing member of UN Week and to be given the opportunity to put together a panel to seriously address ways to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).  Reflecting on what Vivanista stands for -the sharing of best practices; I wanted to pull together a panel that could not only intelligently discuss the issue, but that could step up and participate in a solution.

Each panelist brought a different perspective to our topic of empowering girls in developing countries – MDG#3.  My goal was to encourage the panel to collaborate to create a campaign to get girls to want to raise awareness and fundraise for girls in developing countries.
I hope we can rally our members, nonprofit organization and teen groups to embrace and, even mores, inspire other teens to affect change:

  1. Create i Inspire campaign
  2. Choose International Women’s Day as the one-day when girls around the world come together to bring awareness
  3. Identify corporate sponsor to match funds raised

We’re really excited about our partnership with the UN Foundation, the success of our panel and what the future holds for empowering girls.

Would you like to be part of the movement?

Send us an email to teamviva@vivanista.com

Other highlights of the day were when Kim Perry, not only gave Zainab Salbi a high five on stage, but  also gave kudos to Vivanista’s Parties for a Purpose campaign.

Watch highlights from the discussion below.

Click here to watch the entire broadcast video from the panel discussion on empowering girls >>