When we first conceptualized Chocolate Villa, it was our plan to rent a lovely villa in the Italian countryside to gather and share our stories, explore ideas about women and leadership, and build upon our collective experience to create a development approach that truly reflected the strengths of femininity.
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Thirty women participated in two 2.5-day programs, focused on building skills of emotional intelligence, exploring gender diversity, defining success and breaking down barriers, and mapping their career/life goals in the tradition of our other Chocolate Villa programs.
We were thrilled for the opportunity to spend a week with a group of courageous and beautiful women, many of whom have committed their lives to the service of others. They gave us the gracious feedback seen in the word chart below in response to their time spent at Chocolate Villa in Rome:
“The word or phrase that best describes my experience at Chocolate Villa is…”
The UN World Food Programme plans to host 12 Chocolate Villa INSPIRE programs in 2014, in regional centers such as Johannesburg, Nairobi, Panama, Bangkok, Cairo, Dakar, and Rome.
We are excited and appreciative to include the women of the WFP to the Chocolate Villa community! We invite you all to join the conversations and share your experiences with us through Facebook, LinkedIn, and our soon-to-launch website portal that will provide you with a vast array of resources and fresh content to help support the initiatives in your organizations.
—Merrilee