Tuesdays, at Greater Kennedy Plaza: Kidoinfo: Storytelling for Children 10am - 11am.  Families can bring a blanket and enjoy different storytellers each week near the fountain in Burnside Park.  Kidoinfo will feature at least one book by a Rhode Island author or illustrator. Anisa Raoof, publisher of Kidoinfo  will be reading on 7/7 with Mayor David N. Cicilline

Wednesdays, Cardio Pole Beat w/ Jennifer at 7:30 pm. Okay ladies we are getting Sexy Fit this summer and committing to this 6-week program.  Sign up and join us, or try another fabulous class at JMKennedy Pole Fitness Studio at Hope Artiste Village, Pawtucket, RI

Saturday, July 10: Deadline for the WFRI Women's Policy Institute Fellowship.  Download the application here. Open to all women who want to influence the Public Policy Decision making process that occurs in our state.

Saturday, July 10: Providence Rollerderby at the Bank of America Skating Rink, where you can witness the spectacle that is derby! The long time rivals the Old Money Honeys take on the Mob Squad, this is the ONLY OUTDOOR BOUT of the year,

doors open at . 6:00 pm, bout is at 7:00 pm  More information

Wednesday, July 14:   Providence Geeks Dinner, AS220 see here for showcased speaker Yes Soul at Work women are geeky and smart! 5:30 - 8:30pm

Saturday, July 24: Summer Bash at Car's Bar & Grill in Chepachet, proceeds to benefit, Dana Farber  tickets.6:00pm- ?, $24/Ticket (2 for $40) Volleyball games, pool tables, horseshoe, pizza/ salad bar. 8:00 Live band and dancing with "Blame it on Bob" Michelle Girasole of the Sassy Ladies is putting this on! This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Wednesday, July 28: PBN 40 under 40, not that age matters, but there are number of dynamic Soul at Work women being honored here: Hats off to Lisa Carnavali, Amy Kershaw, and other featured women! There is a fee: $60, but heck that includes food/ drink. The International Tennis Hall of Fame

194 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, RI.5:30 - 8:00pm  More information

Thursday, July 29:  Pecha Kucha #16, Theme is Back to Nature, at The Steelyard, 27 Sims Avenue, Providence RI. Free of course! Gathering at 7:20pm, presentations start at 8:20 pm.  Hostess is Stephanie Gerson

Saturday, July 31: The Wooly Fair,  Monohasset Mill, 532 Kinsley Ave, Providence, RI.  1:00 pm - 2:00 am,We went last year and it was a blast!!  Described by attendees as "magic" and "a marathon jamboree of creativity," Wooly Fair was named one of the top ten art events of 2009 by the Providence 10 and has gained the attention of the local media and online community as well as the Providence Department of Art, Culture and Tourism. $12 online/ $15 at the door: Tickets

Did you get a chance to attend one or two or all of these?  Please tell us what you thought:

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March is Women's Herstory Month there are plenty of activities and celebrations that we'll be showing up at.

Activities:

• Connecting Creative Communities: Tuesday March 10 - 11th, Biltmore Hotel, Providence, RI.  $60 to register, still time!

• Wednesday, March 10th, it’s the one-year anniversary of Pecha Kucha in Providence! The theme, in honor of our summit is: Connecting Creative Communities. If you haven't yet heard of this global yet unpronounceable phenomenon, Pecha Kucha is a monthly format for sharing ideas, in which presenters are allotted 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide. Waterplace Restaurant; free. Doors open at 7:20, presentations start at 8:20, and shmoozing goes down throughout. Dance party to follow presentations.

• Women Helping Women, to benefit Women's Shelter at Crossroads RI also on March 10th from 5:30 - 7:30pm at Cafe Nuovo, tickets are $100, for more info, see here or go to to sign up online: http://www.crossroadsri.org/howtohelp/event/step1.aspx

•  Wednesday, March 10th - 13th, Following a critically-acclaimed, sold-out run in Cambridge, MA, Harriet Jacobs, the astonishing new play from Lydia R. Diamond, now comes to Providence’s Perishable Theater in a chamber production presented by Cambridge’s Underground Railway Theater, in collaboration with the Providence Black Repertory Company. Tickets are $20 for adults and $15 for seniors, students, and members of the Armed Forces. All performances will be followed by talk back panels. Wednesday, March 10 till Saturday, March 13, 2010, 7:30 pm.

• Thursday, March 11th 7:00 pm,  Naomi Shihab Nye will visit the Ocean State to present “Everything Comes Next-Daily Rebirth through  Reading and Writing” on Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 7:00 pm at Moses Brown School, 250 Lloyd Avenue, Providence, RI at ALUMNI HALL (for further information re: location call Sandi Seltzer  at 401-831-7350, ext 112).  This program is free and open to the public, and is co-sponsored by Moses Brown School and Cultural Connections, along with fiscal sponsor International Institute RI and made possible, in part, through a grant from the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, major funders of the RAISE YOUR VOICE project.

• Thursday March 18th: WCSWANS at McGovern's on the Water, Fall River, RI, Joanie Weinberg, "Single Again, Now what?" from 6:00 - 9:00pm.

If you are on our online network, please log in and "add an event" to our calendar or to this posting.  If you'd like to submit a Women's Herstory event, please comment below:

Reports:

The Shriver Report A Woman's Nation Changes Everything
Even though California was disqualified from the Race to the Top federal funding, California's first lady is laying out a progressive roadmap for women.  The report found plenty of plenty of good news. Women are more educated than ever before, now earning 60 percent of the college degrees awarded each year and fully half of the PhDs. Women are also running more businesses than ever before. Last year they were at the helm of ten million small businesses with combined sales of more than a trillion dollars.

But the whole truth is harsher. Women still don't have pay equity with men. Women still aren't equally represented in top leadership positions in business and government. Workplace policies haven't changed to meet the needs of women who are not only primary breadwinners, but often primary caregivers, too. In this day and age, so many women, many of them single parents, are struggling mightily.

Also, see read about the status of women in RI at the Women's Fund of RI, more to come.

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Many ask, "What is an Unconference?" In a nutshell it is an event in which the attendees in the moment create the agenda and lead the conversation. The sessions are put forward by the women who attend and are diverse. Anyone can suggest a topic as well as lead, but remember folks are going to pick and choose the topics they are most interested in. This "My Soul at Work Unconference" is different...we have our basic structure of leading from the inside out, as well as finding ways to make our real practices best practices in the realms of self, teams or groups, workplaces and society. SO we'll start with that as a framework to list topics you are interested in discussing.

The first part of the My Soul at Work unconference is the agenda making component in the moment. We’ll start with a blank wall and, in less than 30-minutes, through a highly participative process, create the agenda for the rest of the evening, that is relevant and inspiring to everyone there about “Creating our Future.”

From there, we go to separate areas assigned to each topic. The session can be a presentation, inquiry about a question or discussion about an issue or way of leading. In each session, one participant volunteers to record the conversation.

The notes from each session are collected in my soul at work newsroom, then an online book is compiled with all the notes from the conference and distributed to everyone who attended.

History

The concept of the “unconference” came from the Open Space Technology method created by Owen Harrison in 1985 as a way to conduct a ‘self-organizing’ meetings around complex issues. Over the past 5 years the technology world as adopted this method as a way to respond to the overly programmed “conference” format and thus coined it as an “unconference:” a catchy and to the point label. Yet, the process and approach are the same. Here are the basic “rules” of the unconference:

The Law of Mobility (aka: Law of Two Feet):
You can pick and choose the topic you want to attend and how long you want to attend. If after say five-minutes into the topic, you feel you are not learning or contributing, you may move to another session (or take a break) by using your two feet. What this says is that we are all responsible for our learning and contribution, if it just isn’t happening it is okay to move on.

Who should attend?
Women of all sectors, industry and backgrounds who want to create a future of their own making rather than reacting (or overreacting) to current circumstances. So what will it take to create your own future? That is up to the attendees to explore and discuss.

The four principles of the Unconference are:

1. Whoever attends is the right people: this alerts the participants that attendees of a session class as "right" simply because they care to attend
2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have: this tells the attendees to pay attention to events of the moment, instead of worrying about what could possibly happen
3. Whenever it starts is the right time: clarifies the lack of any given schedule or structure and emphasizes creativity and innovation
4. When it's over, it's over: encourages the participants not to waste time, but to move on to something else when the fruitful discussion ends

For more information on Unconference or Open Space Technology see here:
http://www.openspaceworld.com/brief_history.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference