A Brief History of VCWFC:

Over many decades, the United Nations has made significant progress in advancing gender equality, including through landmark agreements such as the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

The Ventura County Women's Forum Collaborative is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to empowering Ventura County women around the most current global concerns for women, UN Women’s Four Strategic Priorities:

• governance and participation in public life

• women’s economic empowerment

• ending violence against women and girls

• women, peace and security, humanitarian action, and disaster risk reduction

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VCWFC began as a grass-roots gathering of local women leaders in 2005, 10 years after Diana Goodrow and Cecilia Fargo attended the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995 and set out to bring the 12 global critical areas of concern and platform for action to Ventura County:

Poverty Education Health Violence Economic Justice

Power Sharing Institutional Mechanisms Human Rights

Media Peace Environment The Girl-Child

Between 2006 and 2012, we held five major, full-day forums with broad community attendance.

In the Fall of 2013, we introduced a new format to provide a vehicle for our many member organizations to host single topic, 60 minute presentations on subjects related to our stated issues through a gender lens. Click on the tabs in the menu for more information about past forums and seasons.

In 2018, we decided to play a more supportive role to the many like-minded organizations that had emerged in the county and applied for UN ECOSOC Consultative Status to reinforce our mission.

In 2020, our Consultative Status was approved - in the midst of the pandemic - while we continued (and continue) to support efforts empowering local women around the most current global UN concerns using our boots, sponsorship, and communication tools.

Like all organizations, we need to evolve to meet the needs of our community. With so many amazing organizations stepping up around critical concerns for women in Ventura County, rather than hosting forums, since 2018, we have been supporting those events with our boots, sponsorship, and communication, while working with The Acorn Project to establish a stronger voice for Ventura County in the national and global community.

PLEASE JOIN US in bringing a intersectional, gender lens to important global issues in Ventura County and recognizing our role as members of the global community!

We are looking for collaborative leaders to join our leadership team.