Promoting Social Justice and Equality for Women  
   

 

Past Recipients of the Rosemary Brown Award include,

2008 Margaret Mitchell - Women in Politics

2007 Angela Schira - Women in the Labour Movement

2006 Valerie Fronczek - Children's Rights

2005 Barbara Bins -Women's Equality Issues

 

 

 

 

The Rosemary Brown Award for Women is sponsored by the United Nations Association of Canada (Vancouver chapter), the BC Association of Social Workers, the University Women’s Club of Vancouver, the BC Federation of Labour, the BC Human Rights Coalition, the National Congress of Black Women and the Society for the Children and Youth of BC.

 

Each year the Rosemary Brown Award for women honours a BC woman or BC based organization that promotes the values and ideals that Rosemary Brown Championed during her lifetime. Those values and ideals should be reflected by demonstrating exceptional qualities or achievements in one of the following selected areas or themes:  Children's Rights, Women in Labour, Human Rights, Political Activism or Women in Politics, Social Justice and Community Development, International Development,  and Women's Equality Issues

Greater Vancouver Gogos logo - Gogos means grandmother  

2009 Rosemary Brown Award Winners

Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign

Grandmothers to Grandmothers groups in British Columbia have won the Rosemary Brown Award for Women for 2009. The award, now in its fifth year, was named for Rosemary Brown, the first black woman elected to a Canadian legislature (in BC 1972-1986). Barbara Clay, chair of the Greater Vancouver “Gogos”, (African for Grandmother) accepted the award at a ceremony on June 3, along with grandmothers from the Kamloops Go Grannies and the Nanaimo Go Grannies which were the first two groups in B.C.

The Stephen Lewis Foundation's Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign seeks to build solidarity, raise awareness and mobilize support in Canada for Africa's grandmothers. Some 220 groups of Canadian grandmothers have taken up the call to action. To date, the campaign has raised more than $6 million for African grandmothers and the children in their care. These funds are distributed to community-level organizations in 15 sub-Saharan African countries that provide grandmothers with much needed support, such as food, housing grants, school fees for their grandchildren and grief counseling. Grandmothers have emerged as the 'unsung heroes' of Africa.

  

They bury their own children and then in their 50s, 60s and 70s begin to parent again, raising their grandchildren with little or no support. In some countries, 40-60% of orphans live in grandmother-headed households. These courageous and resilient women have no time to grieve. Their priority is the next generation: the infants, toddlers, and teenagers who are left behind. Although there is never enough for their burgeoning households, somehow these grandmothers attempt to feed, clothe and comfort their grandchildren.

The Grandmothers receive the Rosemary Brown Award The Grandmothers receive the Rosemary Brown Award The Grandmothers receive the Rosemary Brown Award

The Grandmothers receive the Rosemary Brown Award (held by Barbara Clay, chair of the Greater Vancouver Gogos) and commemorative plaques that were presented to the Kamloops, Nanaimo and Vancouver chapters.

(View a slideshow of the event) (See video excerpt of Barbara Clay's Acceptance speech)