International Women's Day Celebration 2012

Program Report:
Title: International Women’s Day Celebration Venue: American Corner Bauchi
Date: 8/3/2012 Time: 3:30-4:45pm Attendance: 40
The American Corner Bauchi in collaboration with the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy
has today joined the rest of the world to celebrate “International Women’s Day”.
This year’s celebration which is themed; Empower Rural Women – End Hunger and Poverty is
observed with speaker program, interactive session, introduction of Micro-Credit as well as
presentation of Desktop Computers to women beneficiaries under the ICT for development initiative
of the 1st lady of Bauchi State Hajiya Aisha Isa Yuguda.
After the welcome address and introduction of speakers at the event and subsequent welcome
speech by Her Excellency represented by her SSA, the program commenced with a paper
presentation titled “Education and Women Empowerment” by Hajiya Azumi Bako (National
Publicity Secretary) National Council of Women Societies. In her speech, she said that women
constitute half of the total population of the world and they perform an estimated 60 percent of
the worlds work force but own only 1 percent of world’s land and just 10% of the world’s income
yet she said they denied the right to education, intellectual obscurantism in the patriarch society
even though they are contributing to national development. While stressing that their work is
unrecognized and uncounted as a result of this, they lagged behind in all spheres of life, a situation
she said that had to be put to an end by educating them which is the most important means of
empowering women with knowledge, skills and self confidence necessary to participate fully in
the development process.

Her paper was followed by an introduction of Nasreen Micro-Credit. According to its Business
manager Nasir Ibrahim, the aim an objective of the credit scheme is to empower the woman
saying that accessing their credit need no collateral hence making it very easy.
Before the program came to an end, representative of Her Excellency Hajiya A’isha Isa Yuguda said
that they will partner with Nasreen Micro-Credit to empower more women. This was followed by
the presentation of certificate of training completion as well as presentation of 19 Desktop
Computers to members of Network of People Living With HIV/AIDS in Nigeria (NEPWHAN) Bauchi
chapter by the representative of 1st lady and the Center Director of Prof. Iya Abubakar Community
Resource Center.