Global Girl Leading Summit 2024
The first Mulberry event at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre since 2018, the summit focused on ‘Women’s Leadership at Local, National and International Levels’.
The day was the culmination of the previous year of Global Girl Leading work and was attended by over 500 students, speakers and guests who had been involved throughout. The whole event was livestreamed for partner schools watching online, particularly in Kenya and India. International visitors from Mexico and Australia were also in the room, coming to London for the event and for a programme of visits at Mulberry schools earlier in the week. This programme included the performance of a traditional Mexican dance by Colegio Carol Baur students for an audience at Mulberry School for Girls.
Opening at 9am BST with the Global Girl Leading Introduction Film, attendees first heard from Tina Tchen (Executive Vice President, Strategy & Impact, The Obama Foundation) in a keynote speech about her journey and the change she has been able to lead in the world.
The day then shifted to focus specifically on national leadership, with students taking part in a dialogue mat activity looking at gender inequality in pay, politics, sport and the arts. This prepared them for the first panel of the day which featured four national leaders of change:
- Dorothy Byrne (President, Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge; former Head of News and Current Affairs, Channel 4 Television)
- Rachel Bagshaw (Artistic Director, Unicorn Theatre)
- Dame Rachel de Souza (Children’s Commissioner for England)
- Nusrath Hassan (Head of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, National Theatre)
After a break, the local leadership section of the day began with the film Her Story, Our Inspiration. This marked the first public showing of the film, with many of the people who had been involved in it watching in the room. Three of the student participants then took part in a short panel discussing their work. They were followed by a discussion of social entrepreneurship and local campaigning with:
- Jane Farrell (Independent Consultant)
- Lamide Odanye (Co-founder, LIVE; Senior Project Officer, Greater London Authority)
- Dr Vanessa Ogden (CEO of Mulberry School Trust)
The panel also featured contributions from students who led social action campaigns at Mulberry School for Girls earlier in the year.
The first half of the summit was closed by performances of five pieces from Letters to Our Daughters, introduced by Leora Cruddas (Founding Chief Executive, Confederation of School Trusts), one of the judges for the project. Each student represented a different school, including one from Colegio Carol Baur.
During lunch, attendees were able to engage with several displays:
- Seven portraits of the winning Letters to Our Daughters students were shown alongside free copies of the published anthology
- A collection of protest signs created by Her Story, Our Inspiration participants alongside the film
- The full version of Speakers’ Corner was available to watch
After lunch, the international section was begun by a keynote speech from H.E. Josefa González-Blanco Ortiz Mena (Mexican Ambassador to the United Kingdom), focusing on the power of saying no and the importance of women’s voices. A selection of Speakers’ Corner videos was then shown, highlighting the breadth of Global Girl Leading’s connections and sisterhood. Students then took part in another dialogue mat activity, this time looking at girls’ education, women’s involvement in finance and female leadership, all at international level. This helped them engage with the final panel of the day about international women’s leadership, featuring:
- Tina Tchen (Executive Vice President, Strategy & Impact, The Obama Foundation)
- E. Josefa González-Blanco Ortiz Mena (Mexican Ambassador to the United Kingdom)
- Dr Vanessa Ogden (CEO of Mulberry School Trust)
- Naarah (actor and creative)
- Pinky Lilani (Founder and Chair, Women of the Future)
- Caryl Stern (Chief Impact Officer, LionTree; Former President and CEO, UNICEF USA)
The final part of the day focused on reflection and performance. Attendees first saw a performance by students from Impact Dance, an art-for-social change organisation that offers high quality Hip-Hop Theatre and Street Dance training for young people. They then engaged in two reflection activities. The first of these involved icing one of hundreds of specially-baked gingerbread women with a quality they wanted to take away from the day and ‘internalising’ it by eating it. For the second, students lit a battery-operated tealight and placed it on giant #GGL letters that had been made for the day, symbolising the sisterhood of Global Girl Leading. A choir of Mulberry Schools Trust students then performed a rendition of Alicia Keys’ Girl on Fire, accompanied by videos from students in India and Kenya and glowsticks being waved by students in the room. The day was closed by an address from Dr Vanessa Ogden, inviting participants to next year’s conference.
After the summit, 200 guests, including conference delegates from a variety of schools, friends of Mulberry and speakers, attended a reception at the Terrace Pavilion in the House of Commons. The evening was sponsored by Rushanara Ali, MP for Bethnal Green and Stepney.
