Sacramento community members came out to the Women and Girls Festival Saturday to celebrate Women\u2019s History Month with free resources, live entertainment and many vendors. The festival was hosted by Sacramento City College and put on by the Sacramento County Commission on the Status of Women and Girls.<\/p>\n
Spread out in front of Joan Didion Learning Resource Center, the festival was divided into several categories for resource booths and vendors, including education and workforce, youth and family services, women services, female empowerment, as well as health and wellness.<\/p>\n
The Sacramento County Commission on the Status of Women and Girls<\/a> was established in 2021 and held its inaugural meeting in 2022. The commission\u2019s stated goal is to bring awareness to the inequity faced by many women and girls in the county and provide resources to them.<\/p>\n Charmen Goehring is the chair of Friends of the Commission<\/a>, an organization that fundraises to support the CSWG. She said that the first Women and Girls Festival was held in 2024, with Saturday\u2019s event being the second one, but that they hope to make it an annual occurrence.<\/p>\n \u201cWe thought it\u2019d be a great way to get out into the community and bring the community together to celebrate women and girls, which we don\u2019t do often enough,\u201d Goehring said. \u201cIt\u2019s a really great way to bring all these different organizations together into one place so that people can have a one-stop shop for women, girls and families to come get information that they might need.\u201d<\/p>\n Goehring said that the commission works to bring organizations together to network with each other and the public. Their aim is to provide resources for inequities that women generally face, like domestic violence.<\/p>\n \u201cThey work with the county government to look at budgets, making sure that women and girls are represented, looking at needs in the community for women and girls, and trying to find a way to fill those needs,\u201d Goehring said.<\/p>\n Another organization at the festival that supports women was My Sister\u2019s House<\/a>, an organization that serves women and their families who are impacted by domestic violence. Though initially aiming to primarily support Asian and Pacific Islander communities, they are nonexclusive and have expanded their resources to better support more women from various backgrounds.<\/p>\n Adriana Leal is an intern with My Sister\u2019s House who works primarily in the legal and counseling departments. She said that they provide a wide variety of resources for survivors, including the first Muslim-specific domestic violence shelter, legal support, and group and individual counseling.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have employment placement programs that we help survivors with,\u201d Leal said. \u201cWe do education and prevention. We also have a branch that is specifically dedicated to hate crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n Leal said that she and MSH came out to the festival because they wanted to make community connections while celebrating what makes women strong. She said that representing the organization at this festival was especially important because they manage extremely difficult situations that women face. She also said that it was nice to be able to reflect those struggles on a less intense scale.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the beauty of My Sister\u2019s House is women learning to be independent again after that\u2019s been taken from them with the support of other women and finding that community,\u201d Leal said.<\/p>\n RELATED: Rewriting the script for diverse women in media<\/a><\/p>\n Sacramento County had several departments tabling at the festival, including the Sacramento County Health Center<\/a>. Their table had resources with information on enrolling in Medi-Cal and explained that the center primarily serves low-income, unhoused, Medi-Cal-eligible and uninsured individuals in the county. The center is a primary health clinic that provides adult, pediatric and family medicine, as well as radiology.<\/p>\n Nicole Reyes is a senior office assistant for the chief medical resident of the clinic. She said that this was the center\u2019s first time at the festival, but they attend many fairs to provide resources to the community.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s important to promote health, especially in young women and older women because we just think it\u2019s no big deal,\u201d Reyes said. \u201cSo it\u2019s important to always do checkups, either dental or medical, and always make sure you know your body.\u201d<\/p>\n Reyes said that Women\u2019s History Month is important because women have been active contributors to history and don\u2019t get recognized for it. She said that people don\u2019t think about the fact that women are the reason anyone is there.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have this power inside of us that most women unfortunately don\u2019t use, and it needs to be recognized, especially for the younger generation,\u201d Reyes said.<\/p>\n Many organizations represented at the festival supported adult women, however there were organizations that also aimed to support young girls as well. One organization present was the California International Order of the Rainbow for Girls<\/a>, a nonprofit organization that seeks to instill leadership values in girls aged between 11 and 20. CA Rainbow aims to teach its members public speaking and service skills, and is affiliated<\/a> with the Masonic and Shriner churches.<\/p>\n Aubree Dunn is CA Rainbow\u2019s state officer and appointed vice president for the year. She said that the organization has assemblies in Brazil, the Philippines, Australia, the United States and Canada. She said that they have done many service projects and leadership events, completely through volunteering and fundraising efforts.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a woman in a women-led organization, being able to promote that to other women hits close to home,\u201d Dunn said. \u201cBeing able to share this amazing organization, [as well as] about who we are, how to use our voices to inspire and empower, and being able to share that at this festival means a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n