A DALGETY Bay campaigner was in New York recently to represent an international women’s organisation.

Eva Tyson of Frankfield Road is a member of the Dunfermline branch of Soroptimist International (SI) and she visited the United Nations as one of a 12-strong party from the Great Britain and Ireland wing of SI.

Eva spoke to the Press before and after her trip and she said, “I told fellow delegates about the Dunfermline club’s project in Rwenzori, Uganda. This involves not only financial assistance but also the supply of school equipment. This means that my club has already fulfilled one of the aims emerging from the United Nations – all credit to my club. If the delegates hadn’t heard of Dunfermline before, many of them have by now! We heard Ban Ki-moon here and Melinda Gates. It was fantastic.

“My organisation has for many years had consultative status at the economic and social council at the UN but this was the first time that I had hands-on experience of what this means. There were many meetings and lots of debates but we Soroptimists, together with other organisations, were hopefully able to influence what was in the final reports going back to the governments of all the nations represented.

“We had such long debates because there were so many countries represented and each country has its own culture, religion and its own way of looking at our main concerns – educating girls and eliminating violence against women. I hope we played our part in promoting our Soroptimist aims and objectives.

“I was chosen on my track record as a Soroptimist and the fact that I was part of the delegation is a credit to my club.” The event in New York was the annual session of the Commission on the Status of Women – 2015 represents an important year for the commission as it is 20 years since targets were set out to promote the education of women and girls at the equivalent meeting in Beijing in 1995.

Eva said, “We are concerned mainly with the education of girls and the elimination of violence against women. We feel that if girls get an education, the society they live in will benefit. This is so important in developing countries and it is also important in conflict situations. If women are involved in peacemaking the resulting peace is long-lasting. We also campaign for the elimination of violence against women. This is topical globally and not dependent on whether a country is in the developed world or not.” This latest meeting of the commission discussed whether or not targets from the Beijing ‘platform for action’ have been met two decades later.