November Speaker Program

Nazlin Kanji was born in Uganda and moved to the US in 1973 during the Idi Amin crisis as a refugee. She lived in Austria and Pennsylvania before moving to California in 1978. She is a graduate of Cal State Northridge and Cal Lutheran with a BS and MBA degrees respectively. She is married with no children and has been living in Simi Valley since 1986.  She has worked in the technical field her entire career to include software and product development. She is currently semi-retired, consulting with a software company part-time. She is a strong believer in helping and supporting the community and especially women and girls.

As the Soroptimist International/Soroptimist Internal of Americas Director (SI/SIA) for the 2020 year for Soroptimist International of Simi Valley, she is focused on educating women regarding violence against women. Violence against women comes in many forms and has impacts on women and girls from pre-birth to old age. These range from intimate partner violence; sexual abuse by non-intimate partners; trafficking, forced prostitution, exploitation of labor; physical and sexual violence against prostitutes; sex-selective abortion, female infanticide, female genital mutilation, elder abuse, child marriage and the deliberate neglect of girls; and rape in war.

Each of the issues listed above deserves discussion, we have decided to focus on some of the topics to discuss in-depth so we can bring awareness to our club. These issues align with our current Soroptimist International President’s appeal for the year 2019-2021 “The Road to Equality”. These topics include child marriage, FGM, Human Trafficking, migration, and domestic violence and the rights of older women. We will be covering each of these topics in our monthly newsletter, however, the presentation at the lunch meeting will focus on FGM and Child Marriage. Both issues are more prevalent in the US than we think and awareness of these issues allows us to support the women and girls not only locally but also internationally via organizations highlighted in the webinars presented by Soroptimist International.

Please let us know you plan on attending this month's Speaker Meeting! We look forward to seeing you there. RSVP for Zoom details.