REMARKS OF THE IWF PRESIDENT
Opening Session
2007 IWF World Cornerstone Conference
Amman , Jordan
May 2007

Building Bridges—Breaking Walls

IWF Members, Conference Presenters, and Distinguished Guests:

Good morning and welcome to the 2007 International Women's Forum World Cornerstone Conference —the first ever conducted by the IWF in the Arab World!

“ Building Bridges—Breaking Walls ”—hosted by IWF Jordan, under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Rania Al-Abdullah, Founder of IWF Jordan—has drawn to the extraordinary Land of Jordan and City of Amman more than 500 women leaders from many nations for a historic exchange in this historic time.

On behalf of the IWF and its affiliated IWF Leadership Foundation, I convey our heartfelt thanks to our Jordanian leaders—to IWF Jordan President Reem Abu Hassan, to conference committee members, and to the women of IWF Jordan, all of whom have made possible this conference.

Our world leadership conferences are part of the gift of the IWF—a treasure unique to this global organization of women leaders—an organization built on trust and stewardship:

• Trust is the strength of our diversity, and
• Stewardship of the principle that IWF—at its core—is committed to advancing leadership and opportunity across careers, cultures, and continents.

It is no secret that the times in which we live are most challenging—colored by struggle, divisiveness, conflict—and yet these also are times of enormous possibility, of great opportunity, of daring to imagine what could be and of working to make it so.

With our diverse cultural, national, and other interests as the backdrop, we have—here in Amman—a singular opportunity to come together in an atmosphere of honesty and trust, to lay down preconceived notions, to exchange ideas, to consider how each of us can contribute to helping bridge what divides us and break what restrains us from making real and sustainable global progress.

It is at times such as these that the unique gift of the IWF to bring us together—across cultures—across continents—is most powerful, for if we can be informed by our collective pasts and learn from each other and from our collective experiences, then we can have great hope for a better future in our lifetimes and for our children, grandchildren, and their descendents.

IWF thanks you, and I thank you for participating in the 2007 IWF World Leadership Cornerstone Conference.

Now—here in this ancient land beside the River Jordan—in the words of Maya Angelou—member of the IWF Hall of Fame and poet to the world—I call on you to consider:

“…Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast

Yet, today I call you to my riverside
If you will study war no more, Come,

Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the stone were one…

The River sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Skeikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the tree.

Today, the first and last of every Tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River…

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.

Give birth again
To the dream…”

Ladies and Gentlemen…..please welcome to the stage for the opening Plenary session of this World Cornerstone Conference…..Nissreen Haram.