President Obama Starts Our Month Off Right!

On Thursday (January 30th), he signed a Presidential Memorandum to strengthen and expand US government capacity and coordination across all agencies to better promote gender equality and empower women and girls.

President Obama Starts Our Month Off Right!

We mentioned in our February kick-off that we’d be paying close attention to our government leaders and making sure they keep women at the heart of the political process. It appears, President Obama was thinking along the same lines and in fact, he got a head start on us. On Thursday (January 30th), he signed a Presidential Memorandum to strengthen and expand US government capacity and coordination across all agencies to better promote gender equality and empower women and girls. It will institutionalize former efforts to advance women’s and girl’s issues to carry equal weight in all levels of policy and will go further to ensure that all of the world’s citizens have the same rights and chances of reaching their full potential. It also means our new Secretary of State, John Kerry will designate an Ambassador at Large who will report directly to the Secretary to head the office of Global Women’s Issues- just as Melanne Verveer has so capably done.

You’ll note from the picture attached to this blog that our outgoing Secretary, Hillary Clinton played a major role in the development of this memorandum and we’re grateful that she helped insure that pen went to paper on this one. We’re pretty excited about this and hope you’ll read both the complete Memorandum and the blog post penned by Valerie Jarrett and Samantha Power.

We like Christy’s take on this new development: “It’s February 2nd and my heart is already warming. Thank you President Obama for prioritizing girls and women so soon after the inauguration. In my opinion, intention is everything. By signing this Memorandum on January 30th you have told us and the world that we matter, not just to ourselves, but to everyone.”

Thank you