The Foundation of Wayne Community College will host two lectures on women in the Middle East on April 8.
“‘Women, health and development’ – those three words sum up my interests and passions in life as well as public health,” Goldsboro native Betty Jo Harrell Amini has said. Those themes, with insights gained during three decades in the Middle East, are what she will discuss at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. next Tuesday in Room 101 of the Walnut Building on the college’s campus in Goldsboro.
Both talks are free and open to the public with no reservation or registration required.
The 1967 graduate of Goldsboro High School will cover topics such as the advancement of women’s rights in Iran and Egypt compared with women’s advancement in the United States, her personal experiences as an American woman during the Iranian Revolution, and women’s health issues such as genital mutilation in Somalia.
Her presentation will include artifacts, maps, pictures, and she will suggest books relevant to the topics discussed and places she lived and worked.
According to her biography, Ms. Amini did not imagine when she was growing up in Goldsboro that much of her life would be spent working and raising a family in the Middle East.
In the 1970s, when pursuing a master’s degree in public health with a focus on population and family planning at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she met Ata Amini, M.D. from Tehran, Iran. He was pursuing a doctorate in public health in maternal and child health. The couple married in the spring of 1973 and moved to Iran a year later. They were residing in Tehran during the Iranian Revolution. From 1974 to 2004, the Aminis also lived in Yemen, Somalia and Egypt where Dr. Amini was employed by the World Health Organization.
For more information, contact the Foundation at (919) 739-7017 or awnorthington@waynecc.edu.
The college encourages persons with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. If you anticipate needing accommodation or having questions about access, please contact the Foundation at (919) 739-7007 or awnorthington@waynecc.edu. Allow sufficient time to arrange accommodations.
This event is one of many “Arts and Humanities” activities offered to the community by the Foundation of Wayne Community College. For information on other programs, go to www.waynecc.edu/foundation/arts-and-humanities.
The Foundation of Wayne Community College is a non-profit organization that works to broaden the base of community support for educational opportunities at the college. The Foundation assisted WCC students with 243 scholarships worth $235,688 in the fall 2013 and spring 2014 semesters. It also provides funding for innovative campus projects and employee recognition, and cultural programs such as this one for the community.
Wayne Community College is a public, two-year college with an open-door admission policy located in Goldsboro. As it works to develop a highly skilled and competitive workforce, it serves 15,000 individuals annually as well as businesses, industry and community organizations with high quality, affordable, accessible learning opportunities, including more than 100 college credit programs.