Vital Voices and Voices of the Future

Last night I had the incredible privilege to attend the Vital Voices 2013 Global Leadership Awards at the Kennedy Center.  You can put the Kennedy Center on the list of eleventy-million reasons I love living the DC area.

My oldest daughter found out that we could attend for free as part of the Girl Scout delegation and had to go.  Hillary Clinton was going to be there!



Mrs Clinton was a wonderful speaker and it was very cool to see her in person but, surprisingly, the presenter who I enjoyed the most was this guy.  Our Vice President is a wonderful and entertaining speaker.



Did I mention that security was very tight at the Kennedy Center last night.  Secret Service checked my car thouroughly. As I waited for them to finish searching the engine area one agent walked up to my window and asked if I had any bombs in there.  He was grinning so I replied "Nope, I left them home tonight."  That's me, livin' on the edge.

There were many other presenters there last night and you can see most of them in this picture taken at the end of the event, lined up on the stage. On the right, in white is Ann Curry, On the left in the white top is Hillary Clinton with Joe Biden next to her.  The lady next to him with the reddish hair is Diane von Furstenberg.  Some people can make anything look good.  She was wearing a lovely little black dress accessorized with a sling (for her arm recently injured in a skiing accident) in an equally nice black and white print.  Classy!



The focus of the event and of the awards handed out were people working to help women around the world.  There weas a doctor helping women give birth safely in Somalia, a police chief from Brazil who is trying to end domestic violence there, and three brothers working to end human trafficking in India among others.  They were so inspiring. 

As I mentioned, we were there with the Girl Scouts as part of their delegation of Rising Voices.  I'd like to think that I was sitting with our leaders of tomorrow.  Maybe even escorting one of them.



The reason my girl looks so pained in this picture (aside from the usual teen impatience with embarrassing parents) is that she still had to finish packing for a big trip when she got home.  As I'm writing this my daughter is embarking on the trip of a lifetime, the March of the Living.  She will mark Holocaust Remembrance Day in Auschwitz and help to clean a Jewish cemetary in Warsaw.  She is carrying with her letters from 3rd graders at our synagogue to place in the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.  It's a trip that she desperately wanted to make and feels deeply about.  I can't wait to hear about the ways that it inspires her and what form that inspiration takes.