Spring Workshop: Women Will Save the World

With the coronavirus shutdown, Zonta District 3 organized the May 16 spring workshop as an online event. Peconic Bay members Diane Greenberg, Annika Shapiro and Liala Strotman noted especially the talk by Paula Bontempi on the impact of climate change. Dr. Bontempi, Acting Deputy Director of NASA’s Earth Science Division, spoke about a young African woman, Susan Malaso, who is using satellite data on weather to help her home country of Kenya.

Said Strotman, “It was a joy to hear how a young African woman had received a scholarship and training on how to protect tea production in her country.”

Kenya is the world’s third leading country in tea production. During the winter months, frost can cause millions of dollars in damage to tea crops. Malaso came to the U.S. on a graduate research assistantship to learn how to use NASA climate data to predict weather patterns and plan how to mitigate crop damage by frost.

“The Dalai Lama has said women will save the world,” noted Strotman, referring to his statement at the Vancouver Peace Summit in September 2009. Here’s the actual quote: “The world will be saved by the Western woman.”

Perhaps the Dalai Lama was so specific because he was joined at the peace summit by these remarkable women:

• Three Nobel peace laureates: Mairead Maguire, Jody Williams and Betty Williams
• Mary Robinson, first woman President of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
• Susan Davis, whose work has impacted the lives of millions in Haiti, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and several African countries
• Abigail Disney, the filmmaker and philanthropist who produced the documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which tells the story of a group of determined Liberian women who ousted dictator Charles Taylor and installed Africa's first female president