WE Local San Jose Opening Keynote Speaker Celeste Mergens of Days for Girls discusses the power of bridging.
Since 2008, Days for Girls has restored days of education and opportunity to more than 400,000 women and girls in over 100 countries by providing access to sustainable feminine hygiene solutions and health education. Celeste founded Days for Girls at a time when virtually no other organizations were speaking about the global need for menstrual hygiene management solutions, or the potential for those solutions to help break the cycle of poverty for women.
Celeste has led Days for Girls to develop a global network of over 760 volunteer Chapters and Teams, and social enterprise programs in 13 countries, all while maintaining an extremely low overhead. She was featured as a panelist at the 2015 and 2016 UN Commissions on the Status of Women. Her TEDx video has over 19,000 views. Days for Girls is a two-time Girl Effect Champion, winner of the 2015 African Seed Award for Gender Equity and Entrepreneurship, and was named by the Huffington Post as a ‘Next Ten’ Organization poised to change the world in the next decade. Celeste averages over 50 speaking engagements per year.
The Power of Human Centered Design
Can a design process reverse cycles of poverty and violence against women all over the globe? Days for Girls is evidence that it can. Learn about about the process behind the award-winning global success of Days for Girls – a non-profit dedicated to creating a more dignified, humane and sustainable world for girls through reproductive health awareness and sustainable feminine hygiene – and how lessons learned apply to human centered design.
