Kuwait City, Kuwait, March 8, 2025: The campaign theme of this year’s International Women’s Day on March 8 is “Accelerate Action” – and the OCA will be playing its full part in this global initiative.
“Accelerate Action” is a worldwide call to acknowledge strategies, resources and activity that positively impact women's advancement, and to support and elevate their implementation.
In order to “Accelerate Action” in Asia, the Olympic Council of Asia will be hosting the OCA Gender Equity Seminar in Brunei Darussalam on April 14-15.
This will be the second such OCA seminar dedicated to gender equity, following the inaugural event in Bahrain in October 2022, and aims to provide the participants with the tools and knowledge to “Accelerate Action” in their own countries and regions.
First of all, the OCA Gender Equity Seminar in Brunei will be under the leadership of the new Chair of the OCA Gender Equity Committee, Valerie Tarazi – a Palestinian-American swimmer who represented Palestine in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Aged just 25, Valerie has a wealth of experience in and out of the pool and is certain to inspire the “Accelerate Action” campaign with her experience and her determination.
The OCA’s Gender Equity and Safeguarding Manager, Sabine Fakhoury, explains: “Our Gender Equity Seminar in Brunei next month will be aiming to ‘Accelerate Action’ at all levels of the Asian Olympic movement.
“This includes sports leaders at the very top to children entering the sports world at grassroots level and everyone in between such as athletes, coaches and administrators.
“We are sure that our second OCA Gender Equity Seminar will keep things moving forward and empower everyone involved in the movement to work towards our goals. The OCA will fully utilize this theme to support International Women’s Day 2025.”
International Women’s Day says: “This year’s IWD campaign calls for increased momentum and urgency in addressing the systemic barriers and biases that women face, both in personal and professional spheres.
“One of the best ways to forge gender equality is to understand what works and to do more of this, faster.
“Significant barriers to gender equality remain, yet with the right action and support, positive progress can be made for women everywhere.”