a Guest Blog by Deanna Evertt

Deanna Evertt is the president of The Business & Professional Women (BPW) Langley. BPW Langley is a club member of BPW International, one of the world’s most influential organizations with 100+ groups on 5 continents and a permanent seat at the United Nations. BPW is an equality-seeking group working toward the improvement of economic, political, employment and social conditions for women. BPW Langley dinner meetings are held on the 3rd Wednesday of the month. Deanna can be contacted here

PamelaDeanna.sm_Our Business & Professional Women (BPW) Langley monthly dinner meeting was held on February 17th at the Sandman Signature Hotel Langley. Not only was the room full, it was full of energy! And it was a wonderful type of energy that comes from the heart – women that congregate to advocate for others.

BPW Langley Advocacy Efforts
Tracy Scanks, BPW Langley’s 1st Vice President and head of our advocacy committee, gave a brief overview of our efforts there. Our upcoming fundraiser “Undies4Advocacy” set for March 31st at the Dublin Crossing Irish Pub is well underway. Many sponsors are supporting us including:

• A New Leaf Naturopathic Clinic
• Camille Bowling, Ketopia
• Dublin Crossing Irish Pub
• Darman Group
• Elizabeth Ettiquette
• EverBetter Marketing
• eVision Media
• Vickie Mitchell, Royal LePage Wolstencroft Realty

Large and medium sized posters were handed out to be put up. If you would like to put some up, just contact us (info@bpwlangley.com) and we will send you a file you can print off.

Tickets were sold at the end of the dinner meeting and if you weren’t there, you can pick yours up at the March dinner meeting. Tickets are also available through our website here.

BPW International Update
Jill Worobec, past 1st VP of BPW International gave us an update on what has been happening on the national and international BPW level. She mentioned the upcoming BPW events with The Leaders Summit coming up March 11th & 12th in New York and The Asia Pacific Regional Conference in Auckland, New Zealand April 9th and 10th. 

It is this global network of members, professionals, business leaders and mentors working together that sets us apart from other business and networking clubs and offers our Langley members a world of opportunity. Jill recently connected with the BPW Africa Regional Coordinator, Adenike Adeyanju-Osadolor, whom sent her gratitude for what we have done and are doing here in Canada for the “Bring Back Our Girls” Boko Haram campaign.

Pamela Chatry, Keynote Speaker

Pamela Chatry was our keynote speaker for the evening and shared her presentation “Not My Monkeys, Not My Circus”. Pamela spoke about the state of women, business and entrepreneurship. A few notes:

• Over the past 15 years, there has been a 50% increase in the number of self employed women.
• Self employment is the number one way for women to create a living for themselves
• The fastest growing group of women are those over 55 years old.
• Women own one-third of all Canadian companies and they pay the salaries of nearly 2 million people.
And a couple of sobering thoughts:
• In spite of the growth, women are only making approximately 70% of what their male counterparts are making.
• The average annual income for a self employed business woman is $50,000.

This needs to be changed. We need to help and empower women. Pamela went on to talk about the monkeys in our lives and how to get them off our back. There were many valuable tips she shared. I can’t remember them all, but here’s a few that I do:

• Take routine tasks and delegate or hire someone to do ie; housework, book keeping, etc. Give someone else a job.
• Don’t try to do everything yourself. Delegate. Do what you enjoy and what you are passionate about.
• Cut down and get control of your email and social media usage. Don’t let it control you.
• Take time off for YOU and enjoy it. Dance in the sun. Free yourself.
• Bring back Sundays. Remember when Sundays were days where we just relaxed and sometimes did absolutely nothing
• Don’t take on other people’s problems, even if it is family. Especially in the work place. People need to make mistakes, fall down and pick themselves up to learn and grow.
• We are women, we automatically want to help, nurture and take over other’s lives that need help and sometimes we have to learn to say no.
• Nomophobia: The fear of being out of mobile phone contact.

Then to end her presentation, Pamela made us all stand up, raise our right hands and do the ‘not my monkey promise’ and to do this every time we feel overwhelmed, overworked, stressed out and just plain over-doing it.

So if you missed the dinner meeting, here are a few photos from the evening taken from a mobile phone, of course, and as I write this the online world is still buzzing with lots of loving after-effects of her talk.

And now that I am finished this and have posted on our website and social media, I am raising my right hand to go offline as promised…”Not My Monkey, Not My Circus.”