Mentoring Walk Aims To Expand Women Power

Marking International Women’s Day, the members of Graduate Women Fiji took part in the annual vital voices global mentoring walk near Thurston Gardens in Suva yesterday.

The annual vital voices global mentoring walk is done globally has seen 165 mentoring walks done in March around the world. It is a project founded by Hillary Clinton.

Here, the walk was undertaken by Graduate Women Fiji.

Graduate Women Fiji president Maria Sekiguchi: “This is a privately run non-government organisation that looks for women leaders around the world in multiple programmes like entrepreneurship, journalism and other projects.”

She said mentoring walk was started by Geraldine Laybourne, who is an advocate for women, as well as a supporter of female leaders and entrepreneurs.

“Ms Laybourne always goes for one hour walk every day and invites one woman per day to walk with her so this is how it became a global walk.”

She said Graduate Women Fiji started with this annual global mentoring walk in 2017.

“We started off with 30 women and the numbers increased in 2018 and 2019 and this year, we had over 100 women join us for the walk.”

Ms Sekiguchi said the idea about mentoring was to expand power through walking together and sharing stories.

“By partnering with professional women who are wiser and have experiences in mentoring women, can help discuss challenges when they walk,” she said.

Edited by Jonathan Bryce

Feedback: shreeya.verma@fijisun.com.fj