Today, the Cologne diocesan association of the Catholic Women's Community (kfd) invited interested women to its traditional "Political Afternoon. This year the motto is "Justice for Women – Worldwide and Locally. In keeping with the association's jubilee motto "For God's sake – worth living" on the occasion of its 90th anniversary, this time the focus of the event will be a talk with religious Sr. Dr. Lea Ackermann, whose personal commitment "for God's sake" is considered exemplary and has received many awards.
"She is committed with her whole life, with everything she is, to the dignity and rights of women and girls," organizer Hildegard Muller-Brunker said of Sr. Dr. Lea Ackermann. "This is our global policy approach today."As a German-born missionary sister, Sr. Dr. Lea Ackermann already in the sixties in the black African countries Rwanda and Kenya, how just there the women were driven by the destruction of the cultural and economic resources of their country into the pauperization and became victims of sexual machinations and exploitation. To this day, the educationalist, who holds a doctorate in education, advocates for the rehabilitation and integration of foreign girls and women with her organization SOLWODI (Solidarity with women in distress), a comprehensive aid organization of counseling, education and care services, founded in Mombasa in 1985. In a second part, the Political Afternoon then takes up the socio-political commitment of kfd women at grassroots level, analogous to this extraordinary life's work of Lea Ackermann, by presenting a variety of community projects dedicated to SOLWODI-related topics at a "market of initiatives" and illustrating the diversity of kfd work. These include the projects "Action Alliance against Domestic Violence," "Women and Girls in Need," and "Forced Prostitution," as well as the work of the kfd shop in Kerpen-Sindorf, the Bonn projects "Childminders" and "Family Godmothers," or the help offered by the kfd's own St. Francis Foundation. Hedwig Foundation. "I'm curious to see how the women will present it," Muller-Brunker said in the this site interview."Their purpose is to engage participants in conversation, to make it clear that political work is not necessarily party political. It starts on the spot," Muller-Brunker emphasizes. "This can be done by any woman who is awake to things in the world."An exchange in the plenum about these very different fields of work of politically engaged women, in which the kfd demonstrates solidarity worldwide and locally, rounded off the meeting of the women at the Political Afternoon.