United Nations

04 Nov United Nations

On Tuesday the 18^th October, five Sixth Form girls took the opportunity to go to an event at St Paul’s Cathedral in honour of the “United Nations International Day of the Girl”. We were able to walk around St Paul’s and sit where the choir would sit during a service (conveniently called “The Quire!”).  Here we heard an amazing welcome speech from the keynote speaker Roxanna Zea (President and CEO, Rentify), whom we later got the chance to converse with as part of the mentoring programme.  A few years prior to this St Paul’s had held a similar event which had been centred around how to change and increase the number of women in the workplace.

After the introduction and keynote speeches, we were taken to the crypt for the mentoring sessions. Each “speed mentoring” session gave us ten minutes to talk to the mentor, who were all incredibly inspirational women and worked in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) industries.  There were 12 mentors that we were able to grill in the allotted time.  We were able to ask any questions we wanted, which was incredibly useful.  One thing we took from it was that you do not have to have your whole life planned as not one of these women started their education wanting to work in STEM, it just happened to be something they stumbled across on the way and thus, ended up as the successful women they are today.  This was an absolutely amazing opportunity and we took a lot away from it.  Should the opportunity arise again, we would recommend going.

Anjali Channa & Bethany Knight

Year 13