Prime Minister Trudeau, Madame Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, and President/CEO of Women Deliver Katja Iversen announcing the Vancouver will be hosting Women Deliver 2019/photo via Women Deliver on Flickr
Vancouver is getting ready to host the Women Deliver 2019 Conference and there are several Canadian organizations involved in planning, along with Women Deliver. The Canadian Partnership for Women and Children’s Health (CanWaCH) is one of those.
Monica Cainer is a coordinator and a global health and development professional who works for CanWaCH and will be working with all of the organizations involved with Women Deliver to have an impact on the conference.
Even though it is still only in the early planning days, CanWaCh is wanting to leverage its network and figure out a way to bring different groups together, becoming a convening platform with other partners to work towards the conference. The organization is already working with Teacher’s Federation of Canada to help find more Canadian organizations looking to get involved.
According to the Women Delver website and Global BC, the conference started in 2007 with its inaugural event in London. From there, it was held in Washington D.C. in 2010, Kuala Lumpur in 2013 and Copenhagen in 2016. Vancouver will be the first Canadian city to host the conference.
“CanWaCH catalyzes Canadian cooperation amongst its members who are looking to improve women and children’s health around the world,” said Cainer.
Women Deliver’s website states the conference “will bring over 6,000 world leaders, influencers, government officials, civil society representatives, private sector leaders, young people, advocates, academics, activists, and journalists from more than 150 countries to Vancouver.” This conference provides a major opportunity for Canada, and Vancouver, to perform on the world stage.
“With the world stage the way that it is and Canada really shining in how progressive and open it is to different issues that other countries may not be right now, absolutely I think it is the time for Canada to step up and host more conferences like this,” said Cainer.
However, Cainer says there are still many issues and groups within Canada that need better support. Being able to showcase and highlight those issues while helping those groups get the support they need is important too.
“These conferences do help, there has to be work that is done in between, we can’t just have the conference and then forget,” said Cainer. “These conferences do bring these issues to light and often bring funding with them.”
Women Deliver has a mission to continue advocating for women and girls around the globe and CanWaCH is trying to help rally around what Women Deliver is trying to accomplish while adding a Canadian perspective and bringing people together.
“They want the advocating for women and girls to happen all the time, not just at their conference,” said Cainer. “It really is a springboard to engage with Canadians across all sectors and industries on the health, rights, and well-being of women, girls, and adolescents around the globe.”
Hosting the largest women’s conference in the world is not easy and likely could not be accomplished without all of these organizations working together and adding different aspects and attributes to the conference.
“While CanWaCH is very focused on women and children’s health, for the purposes of Women Deliver it is very much not just about health,” said Cainer. “It is anything that helps advocate for women and girls and anything that is important to helping women and girls around the world.”
