* Women of the World festival 2012 at Southbank Centre

WOW – Women of the World ? was launched in March 2011 by Southbank Centre?s Artistic Director Jude Kelly to coincide with the 100th anniversary of International Women?s Day, and is a festival of talks, debates, music, film, comedy and conversations that celebrates the talents of women and girls from all walks of life and all parts of the world.? WOW asks what obstacles exist that prevent women from realising their potential and debates how to make progress, and includes women and girls who are breaking the mould in science, enterprise, law, the arts, health, activism, education, politics, sport, fashion, finance and family life. In 2011, over 7000 people came to the festival. WOW 2012 will happen at Southbank Centre from 8th ? 11th March 2012, and is expanding to Baltimore in March 2012 and to Brisbane and Derry in 2013, with plans to tour WOW to other parts of the UK in the near future.

We are hosting a number of speed mentoring events which will be open to women at all stages of their careers, from those at school to those returning to work. We anticipate there will be women from all fields and industries and it’s a wonderful opportunity to use your expertise in supporting women from all walks of life to overcome their challenges, we hope it inspires in everyone the passion to seek out mentorship either as a mentee or mentor. Each session lasts for approx 1hr 30minutes and during this time you will mentor four different women (each for 15mins), we will provide you with a short brief prior to the event to help you as a mentor. The mentees will be asked to bring a specific challenge or professional issue to discuss with you.

Our first event is on Thursday 8 March, 14.00 ? 16.00. We hope this will be the World’s largest mentoring event.

We will then have speed mentoring sessions across the weekend on Friday 9th March, Saturday 10th March and Sunday 11th March in both an early afternoon and late afternoon time slot on each day.

We look forward to seeing you at the mentoring events across WOW and would like to encourage all the mentors to attend the first large event on 8 March and then as many of the mentoring sessions across the weekend as you would like. Please let Hannah Bird (hannah@hannahbird.net, 07974302417) which sessions you would like to do.