Virtual Events, June 2024

Earth Month Anchored Our Spring Events

Virtual events have been in full swing this spring! Population Connection members and supporters brought all of their energy and enthusiasm to our slate of virtual events in the first half of 2024 — we hope you’ll be inspired to join us in the second half!

March

We celebrated International Women’s Day in March with one of our Global Partners, Hope for Kenya Slum Adolescent Initiative (HKSAI), founded and led by Melvine Ouyo, who is the Vice Chair of our Board of Directors.

HKSAI programs focus on advancing education and empowering vulnerable girls and women in the informal settlements, or slums, in and around Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi.

Population Connection is proud to support HKSAI’s Hope through Education Empowerment Program, which focuses on enhancing enrollment, retention, and graduation rates in higher education for young women. We are honored to collaborate with this organization and to support its life changing programs!

We also hosted a special event for members interested in learning more about planned giving options with Population Connection. Long-time members Julian and Kathy Donahue joined us to talk about why they decided to include Population Connection in their estate plans and how straightforward it was to execute their planned giving preferences.

April

Here at Population Connection, we consider April to be “Earth Month,” and we celebrate accordingly!

Nearly 200 people joined us for two virtual events: “Earth Day Insights: Population Resilience in the Face of Climate Challenges” with John Seager, President and CEO, and “Elevating Population Dynamics and Family Planning in Environmental Dialogue” with Dr. Céline Delacroix, Adjunct Professor of Health Sciences at the University of Ottawa and Director of the FP/Earth project with Population Institute.

Members tabled at Earth Day events in New York City, Pensacola, Florida, and Sunrise, Florida, reaching hundreds of members of their local communities with materials and information making the links between population growth, climate change, resource depletion, and other environmental challenges.

May

Every other month, Population Connection members and supporters meet via Zoom to discuss a different book or long-form publication and how the ideas presented relate to population issues. During our May Page Turners meeting, we discussed Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother. In her 2023 book, historian Peggy O’Donnell Heffington delves into the stories of women throughout history who have navigated the choice to have — or not have — children. Drawing on extensive research and personal experience, Heffington highlights the shared struggles of women across generations and across countries and continents and how they have dealt with societal pressures, economic constraints, environmental concerns, and infertility. She emphasizes the importance of understanding this history to reframe current conversations around motherhood. The book contains a chapter about the population movement and the early days of Zero Population Growth (ZPG), the founding name of Population Connection, which made for a very interesting discussion with longtime members of the organization.

For info about our next meeting, click here.

June

We’re currently in the midst of our third annual Summer Photo Contest, and we invite all of you to submit photos! Winning entries will be printed in the September issue of this magazine, featured on our website throughout the year, and used in other Population Connection digital and print publications. Learn more and enter here. The deadline for entries is World Population Day — July 11!