Denmark’s First Female Prime Minister Joins AUW as a Patron

CHITTAGONG, BANGLADESH – 2 May 2024 – Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark’s first feminine Prime Minister and a decade-long chief of the Social Democrat Party of her nation, has joined the Asian University for Women (AUW) in Bangladesh as a Patron. Prime Minister Thorning Schmidt additionally served as the Chief Executive Officer of Save the Children International and continues to serve on a number of essential Board and Advisory roles, together with as Co-Chair of Facebook’s Oversight Board that addresses advanced points regarding freedom of expression.

Helle Thorning-Schmidt

Asian University for Women ( which was co-founded in 2008 by one other distinguished Danish political chief, former Environment Minister the late Lone Dybkjaer, has gained huge recognition and help In Denmark. The Lone Dybkjaer Foundation was expressly established underneath the stewardship of Ms. Dybkjaer’s husband, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen – who served three phrases as Prime Minister of Denmark. Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen attended the annual Commencement of the Asian University for Women in 2023 in Chittagong, Bangladesh and, in drawing consideration to the important significance of girls’s training and empowerment as a matter of human proper as properly as for addressing wider world challenges, termed the occasion as “an important assembly of all” that he had ever attended.

Prime Minister Thorning-Schmidt stated “I’m delighted to be becoming a member of the Asian University for Women as a Patron. No different college on the earth does what AUW does — it proactively seeks out by way of quite a few artistic strategies to succeed in probably the most marginalized adolescent ladies on the earth, put together them for college training, and graduate them as terribly well-rounded and expert younger ladies who carry a robust dedication to dedicate their lives to overcoming injustice and underdevelopment. Nelson Mandela was my hero as a youngster — and these younger ladies who regardless of all unimaginable obstacles nonetheless persist in creating a new world have additionally captured my admiration. I sit up for serving to the AUW mission in no matter manner I can.”

Prime Minister Rasmussen stated “I’m enormously happy that my pal Prime Minister Helle Thorning Schmidt is becoming a member of AUW as a Patron. She broke many “glass ceilings” and propelled important modifications extra extensively by way of her eager mind and fervour for a extra simply world. On a private be aware, it so occurs that my late spouse Lone Dybkjaer (after whom the AUW Danish Foundation is called) served within the European Parliament with Helle as properly as Helle’s late mother-in-law, Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead, on the European Parliament on the similar time.”

Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt’s awakening to the nice social points got here at an early age: as a teen-ager rising up in Denmark she was already repelled by the cruelty and absurdity of apartheid South Africa. As the Prime Minister of Denmark, she brought about a important enhance in Danish help for training. She famous then: “…we should not neglect susceptible youngsters residing in insecure areas, youngsters residing in fragile conditions. Their proper to training is extraordinarily essential.” As the CEO of Save the Children International, she notably advocated for cover of the susceptible in Syria, Yemen and the Rohingyas from the Rakhine state of Burma.

Educated on the University of Copenhagen and the College of Europe, she brings to the Asian University for Women her deep appreciation of training as an instrument of girls’s empowerment and an unflinching dedication to assist construct this establishment as a heart of worldwide excellence the place each younger girl of expertise can aspire to get a nice training and renew her commitments to the creation of a simply world.

The AUW Council of Patrons is chaired by Chief Patron Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Bangladesh. Other Patrons embrace Mrs. Cherie Blair CBE KC (UK); Laura Bush (USA); Emma Bonino (Italy) and different luminaries from all over the world.

The issuer is solely answerable for the content material of this announcement.