Moving from Formal to Substantive Equality
“WE ARE PARLAMERICAS”:CLOSING MOTIVATIONAL SPEECH BY GUADALUPE VALDEZ
Guadalupe Valdez, Member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Dominican Republic and ParlAmericas board member, shared some inspiring words to conclude the strategic planning session.
I would like to first highlight the importance of working together. What we have done today reflects the experience of thousands of years, from all of us. Not because we are that old, but because we are an amassing of our people, of our women, of our struggles.
And what we have done is to share it through this rich methodology that Keila has presented us. And it signifies the power of uniting and working together.
Working in groups is key to our
fight as women to break with this patriarchal world that dominates
us today in our countries and in
our societies.
I would like to emphasize the importance of the dedication, the responsibility, the enthusiasm with which each of us has participated in these two days of work. Of intense work, but that delivered concrete results we take today to our people, to our countries, to our communities.
This reflects how today we have put into this something that was mentioned yesterday. One of us spoke about the importance of power.
And we have power. Each of us.
We have power within ourselves.
We have power that our communities, our people have
given us. And so that power we
have must be used to create
change.
We must not think that it will be the others, that it will be the rest that will bring about change. The change begins with us, as we have said here. And we will go to our countries as agents of change with all that we have experienced, learned, and come to know over these two days of work.
It seems like a dream but today we have a strategic plan for the Group of Women Parliamentarians of ParlAmericas for the year 2014-2015 ... This strategic plan, what the ParlAmericas team will do is consolidate it.
This consolidation is our work,
our knowledge, our lived
experiences, our testimonies.
But behind it all is thousands
and millions of women and men
who fight for the same thing
that we do here.
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