Last week's Awards to celebrate the One Hundred Unseen Powerful Women list at the King's Fund in London was a fitting way to say goodbye to One World Action and to celebrate its work promoting women’s leadership around the world over the last 22 years.
Women make a fundamental contribution to all kinds of development and yet they often remain 'unseen'. While there are regularly published lists of the rich and famous, the day to day work of millions of women working tirelessly to improve their lives and get their voices heard in society, is rarely recognised. The One Hundred Unseen Powerful Women list celebrates the impact of women who are powerful in different ways.
Funny Women founder, Lynne Parker, was nominated in the Arts and Media Category by Sister Snog's Hela Wozniak-Kay, and took her place alongside an amazing array of women from all over the world who have succeeded in the most incredibly challenging and dangerous circumstances to achieve their goals and change the world.
"I was very humbled to be nominated alongside these women," commented Lynne. "Helping women to find their voice, comedically or otherwise, in the UK, isn't a hardship and at Funny Women we recognise that women are barely heard in some parts of the world. That's why I'd like funny women everywhere to add their voices to the world wide campaign to get women onto the right platforms where their amazing and often unseen contributions to society get the full credit they deserve."
Special guests at the event included One World Action patrons Jon Snow and Neil Mullarkey, as well as our very own Lara A King, winner of this year's Funny Women Awards and over 200 guests.
Awards were given to women in five different categories: Public Service, Human Rights, Business and Entrepreneurs and Arts and Media. Only one of the winners was able to attend the event on the night due to the extraordinary work and diverse locations of those women nominated from afar afield as Afghanistan and Zimbabwe to many closer at home in the UK.
Mary Luz Avendaño, a human rights journalist from Columbia, was there in person to pick up her award in the Arts and Media category. Mary is an incredibly brave young woman who as a campaigning journalist in Medellin, Colombia has uncovered links between police officers and criminal gangs. As a result she is banished from her country.
Read more about the event and find out about all the Unseen Powerful Women winners in the following article HERE.
Many congratulations to Laura Ouseley who organised the event and thanks to One World Action for the opportunity to celebrate women’s leadership in some of the most dangerous and under-resourced parts of the world.
Pictured right, top to bottom: Nominees; Funny Women founder, Lynne Parker with Jon Snow, Dr Sasha Rakoff of Object; Lara A King; Neil Mallarkey and One World Action's Laura Ouseley; Hela Wozniak-Kay of Sister Snog.
