By Beverly Seebach
On June 15, Democrats Abroad Germany revived the DAG Women’s Caucus with a Relaunch Event. Following a welcome by DAG Chair, Kenton Barnes, the Global Women’s Caucus Chair, Ann Hesse, gave an excellent overview of the GWC history, mission, and principles.
Ann's explanation about the connection between GOTV, issue advocacy, and membership boosting provided more transparency into the overarching Women’s Caucus objectives. This led to the discussion about members’ experiences and concerns related to issues that especially affect women as well as participants’ input to define the DAG Women’s Caucus' goals and action plans to accomplish these goals.
Thanks to the participants’ ideas and contributions during the event, we are pleased to report that we have moved closer to identifying near-term goals, including the following: Raise Awareness of the challenges and issues through communications and hosting online and in-person events; Research and Educate members about issues which affect Americans living in Germany; Mobilize Voters leading to increased voter turn-out, including down-ballot; and Take Active Measures supporting women-centered legislation such as reproductive justice and violence against women.
In many ways, DAG Women’s Caucus volunteers will support GWC action teams and relay local information to GWC communications and research groups. In this connection, the DAG Women’s Caucus is looking for leadership members and volunteers for Communications (writing, social media), Research (issues affecting Americans in German, liaise with the GWC teams), and Organization (virtual and in-person events). If you are interested in volunteering, please send an email to [email protected].
One way that you can give support now and at the local level is to work with the Global Women’s Caucus Violence Against Women (VAW) team. The VAW task force is building a website to assist Americans living and traveling abroad who are experiencing domestic violence and/or sexual assault. We are currently focused on five pilot countries (Germany, France, UK, Canada, and Mexico), and are looking for committed volunteers with availability for online research and data entry to help out with this much-needed resource. Work is already underway, but we are certainly happy to add more volunteers to our wonderful group! Time commitment: 3-5 hours per week on your own schedule. Please contact the DAG Women’s Caucus by email [email protected] in order to connect with the Volunteer Coordinators for the VAW project or for more information about how you can get involved with the DAG Women’s Caucus.
If you were not able to attend the event, you still have the opportunity to participate in the DAG Women’s Caucus development planning and to be a part of the team to achieve our Caucus’ overarching goal to mobilize voters and be a strong voice on the issues that concern our members.