South-Central Manitoba's first ever Girls Igniting Real Leadership forum was held in Southport yesterday in celebration of International Girl's Day which took place on October 11th. Event coordinator Alexandréa Nadeau explains her inspiration for the forum stemmed from when she attended the first-ever International Day of the Girl when she was in eighth grade.

Girls from four different schools across the region participated in the forum and Nadeau describes a bit of what these girls accomplished during the event.

"Our wonderful facilitator Val [Garlick] went through everything, so then [the girls] started brainstorming things that they think are issues that they face, which was mostly education, equality, and body image. Then they started discussing solutions for them and then they came up with action plans on how they're going to implement the solutions in their schools."

Inspirational local women also attended the event to talk with the girls and participate in Q&A sessions. Guest speakers at the G.I.R.L forum included EAMS principal Kristen Zwarich, BDO accountant Anita Janzen-Gemmell, TDS-Christianson lawyer Hope Buset, KF Aerospace Chief Flight Instructor Chrissy Perry, CEO of Southern Health Santé Sud Kathy McPhail, Austin-Portage Credit Union VP Cathie McFarlane, and the Honorable Candice Bergen.

Nadeau was pleased with how the event turned out and explains the next steps.

"We're planning on checking in [with the girls involved] two or three times between now and March, and in March we are planning a second meeting, hopefully during the week of International Woman's Day. At this meeting we're hoping to have more of an audience to come see what happened. Between now and then we're also going to try and do some presentations to other school boards around the province to get them involved, even if they couldn't attend."

Nadeau adds she'd like to thank everyone who helped to make the G.I.R.L forum possible.

You can keep up to date with the G.I.R.L forum on social media.

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GIRLManitoba (Twitter)

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