DIVERSE Crawley celebrates International Women’s Day and Crawley WORDfest

In honour of International Women’s Day, the team were giving out free roses and poems to celebrate love, especially in light of the crisis in Ukraine.

The rose and poem giveaway is a part of the Crawley Wordfest, which is a month-long celebration of the creative arts in the town.

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The poem was written by a local poet, who is a part of the DIVERSE Crawley group.

Marilyn Le Feuvre, Coordinator of DIVERSE Crawley, said: “The purpose of today’s event is to celebrate International Women’s Day, which is an annual event and we started this 3 years ago before the pandemic.

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“The idea came from a Lithuanian member who said it’s traditional for women in Lithuania to receive roses on International Women’s Day and we incorporated it.

“Our treasurer is also the WordFEST chair and she is the one who introduced the poem. So we now give out a poem and a rose. This year the poem is written by one of our community members. Every year we try to find a different community lady to write the poem.

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“International Women’s Day is very important to the people of Crawley because of the gender gap and women’s safety. So us women feel like we need to have our voices heard. It’s just over a hundred years since we won the vote, so it’s about continuing to push for our rights.”

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