£170 raised for Cambridge Women's Aid as part of IWD celebrations
On Friday 6th March we celebrated International Women’s Day 2026 at Long Road. We’ve been organising an event annually for the last 4 years for IWD with the aim to spread awareness, fundraise, and celebrate. This year we managed to raise £170.55 for Cambridge Women’s Aid through our pick ‘n’ mix sale as well as through donations by staff and students. A massive thank you to everyone involved, your donations will go towards a charity that provides a specialist service to women and children affected by domestic abuse in Cambridgeshire.
The stand for the college’s film magazine The Long Lens was bustling, and had a selection of stories curated from previous issues to showcase. From championing the women behind the camera, lauding the work of female actors, and simply shining a light on the uniquely feminine stories that are rare gems of the silver screen, there's something for everyone in this anthology of articles. Curious to see what it looked like? You can view it here!
Alongside these, we also had a graffiti wall that shared some shocking facts and statistics around women’s rights and issues whilst encouraging students to decorate and add messages about what made them feel positive about the future.
Students had the opportunity to design their own tote bag. We are in the process of using transfer paper to print these now, and students will soon be able to pick them up. There were also a variety of period products available for students to take for free. In many ways this is thanks to women such as Amika George, who we highlighted and celebrated on the stall.
Without making this article too long, I’ll also briefly mention that we also had women’s only gym and sports sessions in the sports centre, an authors display in the LRC highlighting women such as the sci-fi master N.K Jemisin and transgender activist Juno Dawson, displays about the Ask For Angela safeguarding initiative for public venues, and of course there were also some games and arts and crafts to top it all off.
We would like to say a special thank you to Andrea and Shannon of The Long Lens for organising a fantastic stand (with shorter notice than we had originally planned!) as well as the students who helped us on the day of the event and of course to Long Road’s marketing guru Abby for helping us to get the word out. You helped us make the day even more special!
