A refreshing meeting
The Association of Women Affected by War (AWAW) launched the AWAW- FOKUS advocacy road map “What the Women Say – ACTIONS- not Words Count” - at Earls Court, Cinnamon Lakeside Colombo, this evening. None of the sophistication of most Colombo book launches, but extremely well put together, and an occasion to catch up with some key people working with women – Shyamala Gomez, Nimalka Fernando, Kamini Vitharana, Mrs Sumana Sumanasekera formerly Women’s Bureau and newly appointed as Chairperson of the National Committee for Women (NCW, or as my aunt, Manel Abeysekera, would have said during her tenure as chair, NATCOW), as well as Rajiva Wijesinha, Jehan Perera, and (not in my league)the British High Commissioner, the Norwegian Ambassador and other MPs. We learned from the Chief Guest , the Hon Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaranatunga (confirmed later by others) that 1325 advocate and co-founder of the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN ) Sanam Anderlini was pr