On Wednesday, May 18, 2022, CEO and founder of SAEDI Consulting Barbados Inc, Leisa Perch will sit on the panel for The Global Gender Summit. Ms. Perch, who is a gender specialist, will lend her expertise on the third day of the summit which will focus on Gender, Women and Green Finance.
The Global Gender Summit is a biennial event organized by the Multilateral Development Banks Working Group on Gender (MDB WGG). The main objective of the event is to bring together experts from development institutions, government officials and private sector representatives from across the world to facilitate dialogue and exchange of good practices, lessons learned and advances impacting and driving the global gender agenda. The theme for the 2022 Summit is, “Building Back Better: Advancing Gender Equality for a More Resilient Future” and will focus on work and the care economy, climate change, and digitalization.
The Summit takes place from May 16-19, 2022 in Cairo, Egypt at the Four Seasons First Residence Hotel (Giza), in a hybrid format and is co-hosted by the European Investment Bank and Islamic Development Bank. This will also pave the way towards the Climate Change Conference (COP27) hosted by the Egyptian Government later this year.
The MDB-WGG was established in 2001, to serve as an important platform for the most senior staff leading the gender work in member institutions to convene for knowledge exchange and collaboration on current and most pressing issues and challenges impacting the gender equality agenda globally. Members include the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the European Investment Bank (EIB), the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), IDB Invest, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) and the World Bank (WB).
As part of their exchange and dissemination of knowledge commitments, the working group organizes biennial global summits to facilitate the dialogue and exchange of best practices. These events are crucial to promote cross-fertilization of experiences and accelerate the pace of learning which encourage member institutions to engage and offer state-of-the-art policies and initiatives to their respective clients. The MDB WGG organized previous events in Manila (2008), Peru (2009), Addis Ababa (2011), Istanbul (2012), Manila (2014), Washington, DC (2016) and Rwanda (2019). The 2022 Global Gender Summit is co-hosted by the European Investment Bank and Islamic Development Bank and jointly organized by all member institutions of the MDB WGG.
About Egypt’s Women Empowerment Campaign (Ta’a Marbouta). The Arabic letter “Ta’a Marbouta” that includes the image of a woman at its center is increasingly being recognized throughout Egypt (but also the wider Arab world) as the symbol for women’s empowerment. It stands for the importance of women's participation and inclusion in all economic, political and social areas while highlighting the struggles that women can face in different fields just for being women. The creative idea of the campaign is based on the additional letter added to the ending of Arabic words, mainly adjectives, designating them as females. This letter is named “Ta’a Marbouta” and “Marbouta” means constrained.
The accompanying campaign slogan “Don’t Let a Letter Confine You, It is the Secret of Your Power” plays on this dual meaning accordingly. This national campaign on women’s empowerment was initially a brainchild of the National Council for Women, UNFPA, UNDP and the Swedish Government, and has since been adopted by many other organizations.
