I am happy to to serve as Master of Ceremonies in welcoming Bianca Jagger to the Americas Latino ECO Festival. Jagger’s name is known around the world. In 1970, she became the first wife of rock star Mick Jagger. However, for many of us here today, she achieved her celebrity status because of her life long work as a human rights activist.
Bianca Jagger has been called “the highest paid activist” in the world. Her work defending human rights, ending violence against women and girls, and addressing the threat of climate change has taken her to HOT spots around the glob.
To me, Bianca Jagger offers ALL women of all ages, across all countries and cultures a powerful role model of women’s empowerment and courage.
In my work as the Founder of the 10 TRAITS Women’s Leadership Academy which offers the ONLY leadership training programs in the world based on the New Science of the FEMALE brain, and in my role as a Virtual Mentor with the United Nations, I consider Bianca Jagger a great inspiration for the women I work with.
As a young girl growing up in Nicaragua, she received a scholarship to study political science in France at the Paris Institute of Political Science. Influenced by the work of Gandhi, she traveled extensively in India.
In the mid-1970s, on a visit home to Nicaragua, she was shocked by the oppression and suffering of her people at the hands of the Somoza regime.
A few years later, she took part in an event that she calls: “a turning point” in her life.
At the time, Bianca Jagger was part of a U.S. Congressional Delegation stationed at a UN refugee camp in Honduras. At one point during her official visit, her group saw the capture of 40 refugees. At gunpoint, they were marched away by a well armed death squad, towards El Salvador.
Armed with nothing but cameras to document the raid, Jagger and the delegation trailed the squad along a river towards the Honduran-Salvadoran border. When both groups were within hearing range of each other, Jagger and the staff shouted at the armed raiders: “You will have to kill us all!” The squad considered the situation, approached the group, relieved them of their cameras, and released the cache of captives.
This turning point in her life led to the founding of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation and her lifelong commitment to the issues of justice and human rights.
-Over the years, she has opposed the death penalty and defended the rights of women and of indigenous people in Latin America.
– She has been a member of the Twentieth Century Task Force to Apprehend War Criminals; and a trustee of the Amazon Charitable Trust.
- She has travelled to Afghanistan with a delegation of fourteen women, organized by Global Exchange – to support Afghan women’s projects.
- In 2003, she served as Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador and served as Chair of the World Future Council.
- She has spoken at the Association for Studies About Peak Oil and Gas about “Crimes against Present and Future Generations”.
- – And she has joined with the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Airbus to launch an online campaign called the Plant a Pledge initiative, which aims to restore 150 million hectares of forest around the world by 2020.
Over the years, Bianca Jagger has received many awards, including Honorary Doctorate Degrees in Humanities, and Human Rights,
Today, her Foundation promotes women’s empowerment, leadership and participation in every sector of society: seeking to recognize women in the corridors of power, to get them to the negotiating table, and to make sure their voices are heard.
Along with our co-hosts: Sarah Dupont of Amazon Aid, Sebastian Africano of Trees Water & People, and America’s Latino ECO Festival ambassador, Mayra Urbano please help me welcome Bianca Jagger.
Alexia Parks, 10 TRAITS of Women of Power & Courage
