Evidence of meeting #25 for Status of Women in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was program.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Leanne Nicolle  Director, Community Engagement, Plan International Canada Inc.
Cara Coté  First Vice-President, Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs

4:25 p.m.

Director, Community Engagement, Plan International Canada Inc.

Leanne Nicolle

Yes, we have a partnership with smartwater, which is one of the brands under the Coca-Cola umbrella. They have challenged Canadian girls to be proud of being smart.

It stems from the knowledge that the majority of girls would rather be called “stupid” than “fat”. From that insight they have developed a campaign, in partnership with us, to reach out to Canadian girls to write essays about why they're proud to be smart, so it's called the smartgirl contest.

From that, we have worked with the Coca-Cola company and their women executives. They have helped us and have outreached from their CFO, who is a woman, all the way down to their directors of marketing. Collaboratively, we have written the module on women in business. They sponsored the effort and created a community engagement fund under smartwater. Young people can apply for small grants to make their ideas flourish. They have sponsored that.

4:30 p.m.

NDP

The Chair NDP Irene Mathyssen

Thank you very much.

I want to thank Madam Nicolle and Madam Coté for all that you've added to our discussions and deliberations. We appreciate it very much.

We will now go into deliberations on our draft report.

[Proceedings continue in camera]