Pocklington Prep School pupil, Octavia Farnsworth, was part of a large group of people from all over the world participating in a live zoom Q & A session with Discovery Inc (part of the Discovery Channel group of TV Networks) International Women’s Network, to mark the International Day of the Girl 2020.

As part of his role working for Discovery Inc, Octavia’s Dad is involved with Discovery International Women’s Network.  He explained: “(Discovery) has about 18,000 employees all over the world, of which about 45% are female. We set up the International Women’s Network to promote the amazing work our talented females do for the company. From that we have driven lots of initiatives such as driving the gender pay gap, helping Mum's come back from maternity leave and creating speaking opportunities.”

To mark International Day of the Girl, Discovery employees were invited to bring their daughters to a live Q&A zoom chat to talk about their hopes and vision of the future for their girls and females globally.  Octavia joined her Dad for the chat, answered questions and talked about her likes and dislikes. 

Mr Farnsworth said: “I got involved for Octavia, as I think it’s really important that there are more opportunities for talented females in the world! During the zoom session, Octavia was great and answered the questions really well. She even made some fantastic additions to the pieces I had to answer!”

After the event, Octavia commented: “: I was surprised by the women who spoke about how their career paths have been harder than men in the same position and I don’t want that for myself or my friends in the future.  It made me realise that human beings must work together to make things better in the world. I feel proud to have talked about this with my dad in front of lots of people.”

Initially launched by the global children’s charity Plan International on 11 October 2012 and then adopted by the United Nations, the fundamental aim of International Day of the Girl is to support and empower young women across the globe. Each year the initiative has a different theme designed to champion the human rights of young girls; This year’s theme is “My voice, our equal future”, focusing on helping girls overcome diversity.