I was honoured to be asked to come to speak to people at the ‘How many women does it take?’ event put on by Vanessa McDermott, one of the Community Development Officers in our Neighbourhood East team, last week. Women from Breightmet and the surrounding area gathered at St Catherine’s Academy, donned bright yellow t-shirts and, sustained by cups of tea, put the world to rights.
After a brief intro on the ‘power’ of social media’ with discussion of the Arab Spring, Kony 2012 and Malala Yusefzai, some people (if not all!) were, I hope, inspired to be using these channels to campaign and get their voice heard.
As the day went on, and Craig from our Income Management team faced a barrage of objections and complaints around the government’s bedroom tax, it was clear that there were some main themes and that there would be no problem in getting the women to share their opinion.
One of the sessions was working with a writer to write a ‘rant’. I’ve never seen a writing workshop and it was great to see Louise draw out the ideas and get something produced in only 20 minutes. Continue reading
