As promised last Friday, we've received our first report from the Women2Women conference! I'm pleased to welcome 18-year-old Reem, from Egypt, to the orb28 blog. Here's what she has to say about her experience at the conference:

The Women to Women Conference is one of the most outstanding events that will leave an impact on my life. I came along with one of my friends from Egypt to Boston where Rich and Kari (two conference organizers) were waiting for us to bring us to Lesley University dorms. Our first day was great, it was a travel day so we didn't have any sessions and we had an opportunity to discover the community around us in Cambridge.The next day we had a trolley tour in Boston where we visited the highest building in Boston and this was very impressive. We also visited Boston Port and the first collective church. Afterwards, we had some free time and we went with group of Lebanese and Israeli girls to Boston Museum of Science where we watched a 3-D movie about Sharks and also we had some time to have a tour inside the museum.

After the break we had the conference overview and the opening and it was our first time to meet Todd. He gave a very strong speech about judging people from the outside and how this may lead to a wrong impression about the judged person. At the end we had a nice concert with the peace train where they sang with us some great songs. I liked "you are terrific" the most.

Our third day just started; we had a great session with Victoria Budson, who focused on boosting our self esteem. She talked to us about positive images and that girls nowadays need more positive images. Something she said that I really liked was," there is no failure, there are only feedback." Then we had a session with Andrea Friedman. She talked to us about the Convention of Elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (CEDAW). Also, she informed us about some Articles of the CEDAW and then we had a workshop to brainstorm some solutions that we can implement when we go back to our countries. My group chose the problem of domestic rights and we came up with some ideas that may contribute in solving this problem, such as, holding a conference for parents to orient them about our opinions. Besides, we can have sessions for kids in the second and third grades that boosts their ability to make decisions and present to them some success stories so both girls and boys believe that women can achieve great success.

I am very excited to get more workshops and sessions of this conference to improve myself. One last thing that I want to talk about is the great diversity we have in this conference. We have girls from all over the USA, middle east, and other countries and this provides a great medium for culture exchange and for increasing our understanding of one another.

Bio: Reem, 18, is from Egypt. Her favorite movie is A Walk to Remember and her favorite singer is Celine Dion. She also likes watching El Biet Bitak (This House is Yours), an Egyptian television show.