"We Make Change Work For Women" | 2018 National Women's Month Celeb...

Location: MSU-IIT IDS Multi-Purpose Hallway

With the initiative of the Philippine Commission on Women, the National Women’s Month Celebration is being celebrated in the Philippines every March constituting for the International Women's Day.

Legal basis for this activity are shown below:

• Proclamation No. 224 s. 1988 declaring the first week of March each year as Women’s Week and March 8 as Women’s Rights and International Peace Day;

• Proclamation No. 227 s. 1988 providing for the observance of the Month of March as Women’s Role in History Month; and

• Republic Act (RA) 6949 s. 1990 declaring March 8 of every year as National Women’s Day.

With the theme "We Make Change Work For Women", its goal is to focus on entitling women for engagement accompanied with institutions ensuring their contributions as well as their benefits from changes and developments.

Powerful Elements of this Year's Theme:

• Make Change Work = MCW = Magna Carta of Women – making change work for women necessitates strengthening the implementation of the MCW at all levels. It means putting in place functional mechanisms as well as implementing and making known to citizens, programs and services that address strategic gender needs of women.

• Change – also means Compassionate and Harmonized Actions and Networks for Gender Equality.

• We / us or “kami / tayo” in Filipino – who is going to pave the way for an enabling environment for women to be empowered? Who is going to ensure that the MCW is implemented at all levels? Who is going to make change work for women? It all of us, in our various capacities whether as government officials and employees, members of the private sector, the academe, non-government organizations, or as private individuals can be partners for a change that is gender-responsive. It emphasizes our collective effort, collaboration and participation to ensure that women will not be left behind in the pursuit of change.

In other words, it emphasizes the capabilities of women that greatly affects the society for changes that are positive and moreover they should also take part of reaping what has been sown from efforts made for development.

This can be made possible by empowering women – enabling them to meaningfully engage with other development stakeholders, and by fully implementing the MCW.

This celebration is highly being observed in MSU-IIT. As part of this year's event, their is an exhibit that reflects some renowned women and their contribution and great achievements that can be seen by the entrance of MSU-IIT's Main Library.