October 30, 2013
Anthropologist named president of the Women's World Summit Foundation
Bunny McBride, adjunct lecturer of anthropology at Kansas State University, has been elected president of the Women's World Summit Foundation, an organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.
For the last 22 years, the foundation has been building a worldwide network for its annual global campaigns, world days and prize awards for the empowerment of women and youth around the world.
Among its many activities are the annual Prize for Women's Creativity in Rural Life, with 10 laureates recently selected. They exemplify the life-changing work being done by so many rural women in so many communities.
The goal of this prize is not only to reward the laureates for their contributions to sustainable development, household food security and peace, but also is a public honoring intended to increase recognition and support for the work they do, as well as to inspire other women to take action. This year's laureates are from India; Bosnia-Herzegovina; Senegal; Martinique; Myanmar, or Burma; the Pine Ridge Reservation in the U.S.; Nigeria; Algeria; Lesotho in southern Africa; and Morocco.
As an international, nonprofit, nongovernmental organization, the Women's World Summit Foundation enjoys a consultative status with several United Nations organizations, attends selected international conferences and events and follows regular sessions of the Human Rights Council and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, or CEDAW.
McBride has served on the board of directors for a decade, learning from previous foundation presidents from Canada, China and Sierra Leone, as well as with its founding director in Switzerland.
Her two-year term as this organization's president ends in 2015.