International Women’s Day Marked
Community-Led Accelerated WASH (COWASH), in collaboration with Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Electricity and other stakeholders, marked the 2017 International Women’s Day in Addis Ababa. The event was celebrated with the nationally coined theme, ‘improved women’s saving culture is the foundation for our renaissance,’ and was marked as 41st womens’ day celebration in Ethiopia.
H.E. Dr. Engineer Sileshi Bekele, Minister of Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Electricity, who officially opened the International Women’s Day celebration underscored the need to work towards ensuring equal opportunity for women in development endeavors. The minister, while recalling the progresses made in the recent decades, called upon the actors to coordinate resources to fight the declamatory and violet behaviors and practices.
Ms. Lakech Haile, Director of Women Affairs in the ministry, also noted that celebration of March 8 is to remind the historical injustices perpetuated against women and safeguard the hard-fought rights. According to her, in addition to remembering the day, it is paramount that all stakeholders are committed to creating an enabling environment in which women equally contribute to and benefit from the development of the country.
Other than the national theme, this year’s March 8 celebration at the ministry has an overarching theme that was devised to promote the inclusion of Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) in developments. To help advance this message, all showbiz of the celebration were performed by this group of people. Although it was difficult to know the real impact, the audience’s positive reaction to the performers and performance justified the cause.
COWASH who initiated an all-out performance by PwDs, was one of the organizing committee members. It also financed the expense of the entertainment cost of March 2017 Magazine that focuses on empowering women. For its support, COWASH was acclaimed and received an appreciation certificate from the W/ro Frenesh Mekuria, State Minister of water.
The event was also marked by acknowledging the ministry’s women employees who successfully retired last fiscal year. Besides, to keep in line with the mission of the celebration, women staff members who successfully completed further education received an appreciation letter. In another award category, Eng. Netsanet Hailu received special award for exemplary role in engineering sector.
It is to be recalled that International women’s Day was celebrated for 106th times globally with the theme, ‘women in changing world of work: planet 50-50% by 2030.’
