On 25th September 2015, the 194 countries of the UN General Assembly adopted the 2030 Development Agenda entitled Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and point number 5 of that Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is to achieve gender equality. Because of this goals, all governments and international organization all over world are working together to make sure that in 2030 this goals has achieved. One of the international organization is Plan International. One of Plan international’s program is create girls take over event on the International Day of the Girl. Since 2010, Plan International has celebrated the International Day of the Girl annually by giving incredible opportunities for girls around the world to take over the role of amazing leaders all over the world such as CEO, Governor, Secretary General, Ministry and many others.
One of the opportunities was given to me. I was chosen as the representative of Indonesia and Youth Coalition for Girl (YCG) to join the celebration of International Day of the Girl in Paris and take over the role of Secretary General of The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Angle Gurria. The whole events was held from 6th-12th October and here’s the highlights of the whole events
For the celebration In Paris, Plan International invited 7 girls from 4 different countries; Venezuela, Mali, Guinea, and Indonesia. On the first three days I was in Paris, we had orientation days. On the orientation days we learned about the purpose of International Day of the Girl, the importance of girl take over, how to face the media, self and group care, how to make an effective speech, the difference between sex and gender, and other things to prepare us for our take over.
Beside orientation days, on October 9th we had media interviews with few France medias. Me, myself had an interview with “Le Humanite”. On this interview I was asked about my work as advocate and what was the challenges for girls in my country. I was enjoyed the interview but I also found it a bit challenging because the interviewer only speaks French and I didn’t speak French so we have to use a translator, nevertheless we managed to get through all the questions so I believe it went well.
On the next day we had VIP Mentoring Session. On the Mentoring Session Plan International invite 11 amazing women from all over the world to share their stories with us. I’ve learnt a lot from all these women. They taught us about how important education and hard work are, about what does it takes to be a leader, and also their stories about how they become so inspiring. The mentoring session was one of my favorite part of the whole events.
Wednesday was my Take Over day. On this day I got the chance to replace the role of Angle Gurria, the Secretary General of The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). OECD is an organization who promotes policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world. OECD provides a forum in which governments can work together to share experiences and seek solutions to common problems. They work with governments to understand what drives economic, social and environmental change. They also measure productivity and global flows of trade and investment, analyze and compare data to predict future trends and set international standards on a wide range of things, from agriculture and tax to the safety of chemicals.
In the morning I met the Secretary General Angle Gurria, and we had one hour discussion about gender equality and girl’s leadership, he also gave me souvenirs and books about OECD research on equality. After that I met the Deputy Secretary General, Mari Kiviniemi and the Chief of staff Gabriella Ramoz who both are lovely woman with incredible stories. One of my favorite is Gabriella Ramoz’s story about how she managed to have an amazing professional career and also can be the figure of a good mother and wife in her family at the same time. After that I had a meeting with OECD’s staffs. On that meetings we had discussion about challenges that girls have to face and share and also the recommendation and solutions for these challenges. My journey in OECD office ended with an office tour, where they showed me every corner of OECD building. The whole building was so beautiful, they have 24 meetings room, a castle, a garden and many more.
Later that evening we have gathering in Paris City Hall to celebrate the International Day of the Girl. At that evening I sat with Inggid Nelsen, Gabriela Ramoz, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, and Abby the CEO of Plan International to be the panelist on discussion about Gender Equality and Girl Leadership.
My experience joining the International Day of the Girl in Paris was so amazing and unforgettable. From this experience I’m more aware about gender equality and girl’s power. I believe that equality for girls will only happen if everyone, girls, boys, man and woman start taking action in investing on girl’s leadership. Spreading awareness about this is really important because there are still peoples who don’t understand that girls are being discriminate so therefore we need to work together to change this. This experience also teach me that to be a leader there are many qualification that you need to fulfill, like strong education background, good relationship with allies, effectively use the technologies and last but not least you should always work hard and never put limit on yourself.
Assosiasi MITRA 