Celebrating International Women’s Day 2021

International Women's Day - March 8, 2021
#ChooseToChallenge  #IWD2021

On this special day we choose to celebrate women's achievement. This year’s IWD theme is #ChooseToChallenge - a challenged world is an alert world and from challenge comes change. Individually, we're all responsible for our own thoughts and actions - all day, every day. So, let's all choose to challenge.

Join us as we take you on a visual journey of our celebration and talk below about our beautiful event where we celebrate our team’s achievements, and learn about localization from our honorary guest speaker, Helena Norberg Hodge.

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Our 2021 celebration was hosted at Deux Belettes located in the Byron Bay hinterland. This magical venue perfectly set the tone for our event. Based on principles of slow building, the family behind this impressive venue have spent over forty years regenerating thirty acres of degraded farmland to restore forest ecosystems and create a dream, French-inspired abode.

As a collective of confident, strong women the Arnhem team joined together for an afternoon of taking time to recognise and celebrate our individual and collective successes over the past year. We were welcomed with champagne, local natural wines, and a divine grazing table as we mingled in the courtyard together with our guest speaker, Helena.

Our dear friends at Santos Organics generously donated the most delectable produce for our gourmet grazing platters. Santos are advocates for the empowerment of people and communities to live in a healthy and sustainable way. These shared values were a consistent thread woven through the theme of our beautiful IWD event.

Taking time to explore and appreciate the natural beauty of Deux Belettes, we were then seated beneath the majestic arches at a banquet table dressed with Australian native flowers from The Flower Bar Co. Integral to the culture at Arnhem is that each member of the team are encouraged to share information and open up about what causes are important to us. Arnhem is devoted to creating a team of decision-makers who are empowered, connected and collaborative. The result is a team who are committed to honesty, authenticity and have pure passion for wanting to make the world a better place. To continue moving in a positive direction we were treated to the most inspiring talk from Helena Norberg-Hodge.

Given the recent launch of our first-ever Australian made collection, when we thought about which inspiring woman to invite to our event it was only natural to ask the pioneer of the global localization movement to join us. Helena has been dedicated for more than forty years to the revitalisation of cultural and biological diversity, and the strengthening of local communities and economies worldwide. We were immensely grateful to sit in her presence and learn about her early years in Ladakh that came to inspire her life-long dedication to creating strategies for change that result in resilient, connected communities in which people and planet flourish. Helena adeptly wove a narrative that enabled us to understand the need for bottom-up grassroots initiatives and top-down policy changes if we are to live in a world where poverty is reduced, wellbeing is improved, and our planet is able to heal from ecological degradation.

To be inspired by Helena with real practical solutions that we can adopt into both our personal and professional lives, and talk about what is truly needed for a global shift towards a sustainable future filled us with powerful optimism and hope. Change and evolution are part of fashion itself by definition. Helena had absolutely motivated us to continue with our commitment to creating beautiful clothing whilst finding solutions to global sustainability challenges that affect both people and planet.

Hearts and minds full we were then satiated by the most delicious wood fired pizzas and salads. During dinner we commemorated the recent milestone on our sustainability journey, by watching the makers and campaign film for our Australian-made collection Beneath Our Sun. We took the time to recognise the incredible work our team do every single day to support and empower each other, with the deepest respect for people and Mother Earth.

This truly magical night enabled us to revisiting cherished memories and create new ones. More than ever, we remain committed to celebrating, supporting and encouraging each other; to listening deeply and challenging our beliefs and the ways that we work. Through determination, resilience and creativity together we will create change that secures a sustainable future.


To find out more about the work of Helena Norberg-Hodge and Local Futures we would encourage you to watch the documentary, The Economics of Happiness or read Helena’s international, best-selling book Ancient Futures
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