Oh what a year it’s been! I actually had to check my calendar to see if it really was this year we did the 10 Decades of Women’s Voices event – so much has happened since then!
And next year, we’re stepping forward and speaking up even more, are you joining us on the ride??
We’re now looking at a new platform, Circles, to merge all activity in, which is super exciting! You can join us already as we build up more of the content.
There will be a free membership where people can access networking, support, mentoring, courses and even a book club – you can upload your bio and profile photo and much much more!
There will also be the revitalised EyeStorm Visibility group and the Speak Up Woman! programme.
So join as a member for free now to be there from the start!
So what did we do this year…?
We:
Kicked off the EyeStorm weekly Visibility programme for the year
Held our annual EyesStorm Mission Board session online
Held our first and second 10 Decades of Women’s Voices zoom prep calls with Helen Guinness at the helm
Held 3 x Round Tables at The Ivy (not just fancy lunches in disguise!)
Did some wintry Connect with Nature walks in Stanmer park
Launched our Gender Equality Survey
Interviewed Juliet Mitchell, Beccy Lodge and Gill Whitty-Collins for the EyeStorm Channel and many more
The first big event of the spring in conjunction with International Women’s Day was our successful Ten Decades of Women’s Voices event in Brighton with 50 guests, opened by the Mayor of Brighton, with panel debate, the Founder of 50:50 Parliament Frances Scott, Clive Bonny, more speakers and a focus progress session.
Five days later, we held our Annual International Women’s Dinner at LOST in the Lanes together with Jo Godden of RubyMoon – an oversubscribed event with delicious food, superb speakers including Lisa Baskott and Samaneh Savadi plus a very awesome disco (book your ticket for the next event soonest!!)
Mi and Lee Baker participated in CSW67, the largest gathering of the UN Member States and other stakeholders focused on the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women over 10 days – join us for the March event!
We then hosted a Ziva Voices Round Table for Dr Kinga Mnich with Beccy Lodge, Gill Whitty-Collins, Helen Guinness and Rifa Thorpe-Tracey
Mi got a bit of Covid
No one felt like walking
Then Mi won and award
And then suddenly it was spring!
We started doing regular EyeStorm Network & Connect online sessions on the last Wednesday of the month, which then developed into Connect & Collab, which continues and is open and free for all EyeStorm members.
We did a beautiful spring photography walk at Nymans Gardens and then it was summer.
In the autumn we launched the first Speak Up Woman! Programme, which ran for six weeks – a fantastic group of women who stepped forward to speak up – and did so very brilliantly!
With the help of our team, we also hosted a video podcast series during the 16 Days of Activism for UN Women UK and their project Safe Spaces Now and we pulled in £400 in support.
We ended the year on the 13th December with the Speak Up Woman stage event and the Vlog Academy and EyeStorm Awards as a finale. We’ve had so much good feedback from the attendees and the speakers were above and beyond all expectations – a new group and event opening up in January!
Lou Featherstone of Lu in Luland put the extra colourful sparkle on the event.
EyeStorm winner of the year, Lucy Hall got stuck in traffic and couldn’t collect the Victory Angel award, but we celebrate her for putting together an amazing space for over 80,000 women in the digital industries, Digital Women.
The speaker videos will be collected in their own page on the EyeStorm website to hopefully spread across the world and generate more speaker opportunities.
So – that’s all for now… have a look at our 2024 schedule, we have a Morocco retreat coming up, more speaker events and the fabulous International Women’s Day dinner coming up – and that’s just until March!
I want to thank everyone who has stepped forward this year, to help, support and bring our events to life.
There’s no quicker way to Gender Equality than women’s grass-root organisations, working together for a communal goal. We’re growing momentum and together we can create change. And it can be fun too.
Come join us in 2024!
Mi Elfverson
Founder of EyeStorm Women
