Dickinsonians ranging from first-years to seniors embarked on a road trip to New York City on Thursday, Oct. 26 to attend the Women’s Education Project’s first annual Beyond Borders forum. The collaborative event included 20 organizations with a mission to advance the lives of women and girls living in poverty.

The conference was organized by the Women’s Education project; an organization that, according to the event’s brochure, was founded in 2002 “to help the women from the poorest backgrounds succeed in college and careers.”

According to the Women’s Education Project’s website, the organization was started by Zoë Timms who got the idea for the project while working with former child laborers who were beginning to study for the first time after recently leaving the fields and factories.

Students enter the project’s program in the 11th grade. The program, hosted at the organization’s three sites in southern India, includes areas to study, computer and library labs, and English classes, among other features.

The event included a panel discussion of six women representing a portion of the organizations present on Thursday. Panelists included the Film Campaign Manager at the Malala Fund, Executive Director and co-creator of the Eileen Fisher Leadership Institute, and the President of the first and only all-girls boarding school in Afghanistan, among others.

“I wanted to go because I am very passionate about girls’ education and women’s empowerment,” says Carolyn Goode ’18. “I’m a women’s and gender studies major so it was definitely right up my alley and I’m also the president of She’s the First so it just seemed perfect.”

The trip was organized by Nora Krantz ’18, who interned for the organization during the summer of 2017. “I wanted to bring Dickinson students to this event because the Women’s Education Project works with girls around our age so our ideas are an important part of the conversation,” says Krantz.

An advertised theme of the event, collaboration, was discussed throughout the presentation. “They talk about ‘Well we’re not here to one up one another and be the best and win,’ like we all want to do the same things for different groups of people” says Goode, “and I think that is a really important reason for why these types of things are so important.”

To carry out the day’s theme, Krantz participated in a closed roundtable discussion during the daytime portion of the forum that included all the participating organizations’ ideas. “It was truly inspirational to be in a room with such accomplished, motivated, passionate women and to feel their energies coming together towards the common goal of empowering girls and women,” says Krantz, “I learned a lot about the importance of collaboration, while still valuing individuality.”

The nighttime portion also included a networking hour where guests were encouraged to meet and collaborate with the organization representatives in attendance at the event.

“These events are important because it allows different organizations to work together in order to reach a common goal,” says Maura Koop ’21.

“I think there are so many people who are rallying together to make changes for these types of people and to, in a larger scale, change the world, in a smaller scale, change the lives of girls who wouldn’t have these opportunities otherwise,” says Goode.

At the conclusion of the event, all participants agreed the theme of collaboration was successful. “The energy of the forum was so amazing,” says Krantz. “It was impossible not to feel the excitement in the room.”