Girls Speakers Bureau at the CIDA Gender Roundtable

When we were told that we'd be going to Ottawa for the Because I am a Girl Technical Roundtable, we were beyond psyched, both to give our perspective to people working in the field and of course, the opportunity to go to the capital! With our bags packed and our speeches crammed onto cue cards, we boarded our train and made the best of over four hours. Safe to say we probably annoyed our fellow passengers with our initial laughing and joking but as we drew nearer to our destination, reality hit us: we were going to the Because I am a Girl Technical Roundtable on Urban Cities and Information and Communication Technologies. If the title itself wasn't intimidating enough, we were going to present in front of professionals like the CEO of Plan Canada herself and people from organizations like CARE and UNICEF, just to name a few. Yikes!

On the first day, which focused on girls in cities, Amy, Saba and Manar presented their perspective on city life for girls. They were great! A calm wave of relief washed over our speakers as we finished the day with the Call to Action Workshop, where we got into groups and discussed how to tackle issues in the different levels of the industry. There was a lot of tricky jargon -intersectionality anyone? - but everyone was very helpful and explained terms we didn't understand.

The evening was absolutely amazing as we took part in a special Because I am a Girl reception on Parliament Hill. The highlight of the evening was, without a doubt, hearing Sally Armstrong speak! She was so inspirational and we felt like giddy high school girls when we talked personally with her.

The second day was all about girls and ICTs and it was Zahra, Yasmin, and Maneesa's turn to speak. We gave the rest of the participants yellow cards so if they didn't get our jargon they could raise the card, because they weren't as young, modern or youthful as we are : ) With our little joke, our nerves were eased and we started our speeches. Before we knew it we were done, but we weren't finished, the roundtable participants had many questions for us. We enjoyed answering their questions and they enjoyed asking them so we went 20 minutes over our time limit! After our speech we broke up into groups once more to discuss how to bring the 'girl lens' into the projects we were involved in. Before we knew it, it was time to catch our train! We had a wonderful time going to Ottawa for the Technical Roundtable. We learned so much, got to meet new people and have fun at the same time.

- Manar, Yasmin, Amy, Maneesa, Zahra, Saba (Members of Plan Canada's Girls Speaker Bureau)