EMC’s Jessica Bowers writes from the Women Deliver Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark

I’m pretty excited about this year’s Women Deliver conference, being held now in Copenhagen, Denmark. There are a lot of conversations about women’s rights that take place in a vacuum — we all have our issue we carry with special fervor, including Every Mother Counts. But its pretty clear to Every Mother Counts and others that poverty alleviation can’t happen without women: specifically the equal access of women in business, politics, educational and health.

What’s exciting about Women Deliver is it feels like a moment — not the first moment, because there have been a lot of those over the last decades. But a moment where conversations about women’s rights, and particularly the rights of women of color, are more mainstream and accessible than ever before. Women Deliver started as a women’s health conference but realized you can’t talk about women’s health without talking about rights, education, and jobs. Women Deliver this year includes people from every corner of he globe and will talk about all of the things that need to coalesce to ensure women’s full health, participation, rights, and life chances — all the things needed to end global poverty.

The conference will include a very big, very diverse group of people who care about equality, equity, and rights, and who see these issues through a host of different lenses. Ultimately though they — we — all want connect with each other, make their voices heard and at the end of the week go back to the 180 countries they came from and make real change, so that the Sustainable Development Goals set by the UN last September have a chance at being met by 2030.

You can check back at @everymomcounts, follow me at @bowersjk, and see some of the conference live at #wdlive or #wd2016 all this week.

Photo: Women Deliver