Zonta Club of Cebu II celebrates International Women’s Day

Zonta Club of Cebu II Celebrates International Women’s Month at the Ayala Mall with a Woman Icon Exhibit Booth and Docu Film Viewing Booth and a Amelia Earhart Look-a-Like March 8 – 23, 2013

International Women’s Day, March 8, was celebrated with great pomp and prestige by the Zonta Club of Cebu 2.

The day started with an open forum on Women’s wellness with speakers Zontians Chona Tremedal, M.D. and Pink Center’s Consuelo Malaga, M.D. at the Pink Center.

From Pink Center, Zontians Cebu II transferred venue to Ayala Mall Center. Mall’s Event organizers invited the public to a month-long series of activities, extolling women’s virtues, values, and worth in her various fields of involvement titled, “I AM WOMAN”.

“I AM WOMAN, I AM AWARE” is a display of different women of substance in various fields, while,” I AM WOMAN, I AM EMPOWERED” is a photo exhibit of iconic women of Cebu. In “I AM WOMAN, I CELEBRATE”, one of the country’s top bossa nova singer, , SITTI entertained the full house (of women!) with songs about women, love, inspiration, empowerment and  confidence.

Zonta Cebu II club-produced Docufilm “Woman, Womb-Man, Woe-Man” (on Domestic violence), was launched during this occasion! Two hundred women from various women organizations in the audience, watched the eight minute film directed by our Club sponsored Film Scholar Johannah Esguerra, who submitted this film as her final thesis in the Cebu Film Academy where she was enrolled in.

Easily the highlight of the evening’s affair was “I AM WOMAN, I INSPIRE” which featured several women’s organizations with their own advocacies. To name some: Rotary Clubs of Gloria Maris and Cebu Fuente, Quota Club of Cebu, One Billion Rising, Zugbuana Jaycees and Zonta Club of Cebu 1 and Zonta Club of Cebu 2.

After photo ops onstage, each Club president posed beneath a canopy of gold and blue balloons and confetti and at a given signal, long ribbons were pulled to release this colorful cascade! Cheers to women from all walks of life!

In keeping with the month-long celebration, each club put up their chosen ICON booth at the Mall’s Activity Center – and guess which famous Zontian graced the Zonta Club of Cebu 2 booth? World-famous American Aviator, AMELIA EARHART, who was the first woman to: fly the Atlantic alone, fly an autogiro, receive the United States Distinguished Flying Cross, and to fly from Hawaii to the mainland.

 Epitomizing  the ideals of Zonta International by encouraging women to take on non-traditional fields  AMELIA wrote  articles in magazines  about Aviation, and lectured at Zonta meetings urging  members  to take up this profession.

At  this time, ZONTA was the only  non-aviation organization to which EARHART belonged.

To add color to our  Zonta Cebu II Booth, we had our own  AMELIA EARHART in the person of Zontian  NANCY VELEZ,  whose likeness to the aviator is amazing, especially when she dressed as the lady pilot, decked with the aviator cap, brown suede jacket and khaki pants. Why, passersby would actually  pose with her.  Quite an attraction to our booth!

Zonta Cebu II was the only club with two booths: the other one housed our DocuFilm “WoMan, Womb Man, Woe-Man”. Shoppers can view the film on a 55” TV screen. The video loop can go on for the duration of Mall hours, from ten a.m. to ten p.m. Club members who volunteered to man the booth on a half day basis distributed fliers on the Club’s advocacies (including Violence against women) with the telephone numbers of the Pink Center.

With the eye catching banner stand “ Give us 5 Minutes of your Time”, mall goers stop by to watch the film. Club Members introduce them to the world of Zonta and what we do. In fact, a Cebu Newspaper reporter left her number so that she can interview us as she wants to publish the Club’s efforts and advocacy in her newspaper column.