Celebrating Momentum and Milestones: A WEDO History of Women’s Organizing Toward a Healthy and Peaceful Planet

 What if we, as women, use this opportunity of the UN Conference on Environment and Development to be the change we want to see in the world?” This was the question women activists posed to themselves in the early 1990s, according to WEDO founding member Thais Corral of Brazil. “This was the starting point of WEDO: a group of friends, a group of women activists occupying a range of strategic positions around the world, trying to figure out how to innovate, how to collaborate – how to be the change we want to see.”

On the occasion of Rio+20 and in celebration and recognition of its twentieth anniversary, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), officially founded by U.S. Congresswoman Bella Abzug and activist/journalist Mim Kelber in 1991, launched last night its newest publication, Celebrating Momentum and Milestones: A WEDO History of Women’s Organizing Toward a Healthy and Peaceful Planet. Far from exhaustive and unabashedly subjective, this timeline presents a snapshot of WEDO’s proudest moments through two decades, advocating for equality and justice in a sustainable world.

“Women’s history is not told enough,” said Cate Owren, WEDO Executive Director. “The women’s movement – under-resourced as it tends to be, stretching to deal with countless urgent issues – seldom has the opportunity to document its efforts. But to honor twenty years of ideas, action and impact, we decided there was no better way than to tell our story – and it’s a great one – to capture the spirit of our founding, to inspire the next twenty years ahead.”

(From the press release)