On March 8 and 9, International Women’s Day (IWD) was celebrated at Sher Ethiopia. Inspire Inclusion was the world wide theme, and we organized a set of activities in light of this.
The festivities started on March 8 with a welcoming speech by our COO Aswin Endeman and our operations director Andrew Brooke-Smith. They emphasized the importance of inclusion to our company, where we actively work on equality for all our employees and where we value the contribution of all our colleagues.
After that, the gender committee had a virtual meeting with the women of the city council of Zoeterwoude, a village in The Netherlands. They were also celebrating International Women’s Day, and it was truly inspiring to share experiences and to learn from each other.
On March 9, we celebrated IWD at our farms for all employees. In Ziway, a photobooth was installed at the entrance gate, and the gender committee welcomed employees with music and dancing. Many pictures were taken at the booth and it was a good and happy start of the working day for many.
Inclusion also means that Sher Ethiopia wants to emphasize that it is important that every employee that comes to work feels comfortable about personal hygiene. For that reason, the company distributed ‘Mela for her’ reusable sanitary kits to harvesters on all farms. Women of other departments will not be forgotten, more will follow.
Finally, a gender committee convention was organized at the clubhouse at Ziway farm. There was a panel discussion that covered topics related to women’s rights, gender equality, and the challenges and achievements of women in various spheres of life.
We look back on a great day where we celebrated the achievements of women throughout the company and where we got inspired to keep on working on inclusion. The motto ‘Invest in women, accelerate progress’ will help us all to keep this in mind.
