International Women’s Day is a day of celebrating women’s achievements, raising awareness about discrimination, and taking action to drive gender parity. At SEDA, we are so fortunate to have multiple female staff that support and encourage us younger women to strive for our passions. Today showed just how much effort these beautiful women put into making us feel important.

Our day began at 9:15am at a place called Jackson’s square located in Hindmarsh. As you walk through the door, each lady was given a gift bag filled with many amazing vouchers and goodies inside. Jackson’s Square was decorated in beautiful pastel colours and a boho theme. The overall aura was extremely welcoming and happy. In the corner of the room was a table full of delicious foods such as croissants, fruit, brownies, scrolls, yoghurt, and many more. The option to grab a juice, iced coffee, chocolate / strawberry milk, or water was also available. There was no way someone could have left feeling hungry.

Throughout the day, we were so lucky to hear from some really empowering women and understand their experiences as females working in different industries. The first guest speaker was Tiffany De Sousa Machado, the Founder and CEO of the Village Foundation. Tiffany was amazing. She taught us girls about standing up for ourselves and being proud of the strong females we are. Tiffany says that our passions are what we should stive for, don’t let anyone else’s opinion get in the way of that.

Continuing from what Tiffany said, we had a panel of six inspiring women from all different industries. In the sporting industry, we had four female representatives. Marena Whittle from the Adelaide Lightning (Basketball), Tayla Williams from the Adelaide Thunderbirds (Netball), Anne Hatchard from the Adelaide Crows (WAFL), and Dylan Holmes from Adelaide United (Soccer). The other two ladies were from construction management and plumbing. Winnie Zhu is a construction manager and Brittney Dekuyper is an Adelaide plumber.

As a collective, the biggest thing I took out from meeting these incredible role models is to believe in yourself. These ladies have worked so hard to get where they are today and to hear them tell us to believe in ourselves and follow our passions was so inspiring.

This was an amazing day for all us female students and we appreciate the effort and time from everyone who helped organise this truly awesome event!

Written by Bella Schaftenaar