Young Women's Event: Adventures in the City!

After spending Friday exploring Lantau Island, it was down to business on Saturday. Some members of the delegation were attending sessions, but I was off to the young women's event, targeting delegates under 30 years of age.

During the 2011 conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, it was decided to make young women a focus of involvement at the governing level. It is even required that one member of every World Board is elected while she is under 30-years-old.

We started off with some icebreaker activities that helped the organizers to gauge how prepared we felt for the conference, so they could direct our discussions the right way. The chair, Nadine El Achy, and deputy chair, Nicola Grinstead, came to speak with us and gave us the chance to speak to them. One sentiment that Nadine had that really stuck with me was, "Dare to be yourself. There is someone who believes in you." I think this was so important for many of us as young delegates with no past World Conference experience. It made me realize that I was there to contribute to my delegation and not to be too reserved about sharing my views. We then learned about important faces we might meet. We also sent ourselves postcards (with an inspiring message from another delegate) and did a "geography" activity.

How ready were we for the conference?

Nadine El Achy (right) and Nicola Grinstead (left).

Matching game!

Sending ourselves postcards with special leadership messages.

Finally, it was time for our leadership challenge. We formed teams and were given a package that described tasks we had to complete. The most important was a business meeting with a Hong Kong leader.

Our team got organized and headed out. Ideally, we were all to have working cell phones while we were out, in case we got lost, but we had some technical difficulties, so we just had to rely on each other to stay together. Our first stop was a faraway temple. As we got further and further away from the airport conference centre, we realized that there was no possible way to make it to all the stops in the time we had. Later, we would discover this was part of the challenge, but we worked effectively to prioritize our plans, especially the business meeting.

Group meeting on the train.

The temple was beautiful and we saw many people worshipping and offering incense around the property. After taking some quick photos and tweeting our organizers, we headed off to get a snack and make it to the business meeting on time, as it was in the ICC building in Kowloon.

The temple.

Group selfie at the temple.

We met some amazing women in our meeting! First, we spoke with Tessie Yang, Vice Chairman of Esquel Group, a textile manufacturing company. Then, her friend Jessie Ng, Executive Director of Pacific Andes International Holdings Limited, a seafood supplier, joined us towards the end. They shared their career paths, provided us with advice and answered our questions. It was great to see such strong and professional women at a high level within their respective organizations.

The group with Tessie.

The group with Jessie.

We finally made it back and had some time for reflection in groups. One thing that our team acknowledged was how important it can be to be flexible in leadership situations. During our outing we were constantly keeping track of our group, switching off on leaders, keeping time and changing our plans. As good as it can be to have a plan and stick to it, sometimes that just isn't possible. We also heard from Laura Bode, a global leadership consultant about what we can do for our advancement in leadership as young women.

Our leadership challenge team!

It was an inspiring day and my connections with the other young delegates were much stronger than I could have imagined they could be from such a short period of time!