others to push themselves harder and not give up, proving to be and our role model. [applause] [applause] evira ziayz, 18, a career counselor with lyric and has worked hard to build partnerships. she motivates other young people to be their best while demonstrating respectful and responsible leadership wherever she is. [applause]

[applause] gerald is at inner-city youth where he incurred as other people to be leaders. gerald is also praised for his perseverance and compassionate speaking out against violence. he recently completed the program at city college where he focused on green technology and will soon transferred to louisiana state university. he will be missed. [applause]

[applause] lauren dangerfield, 16, has led the forefront of campaigns for people winning in time of rights. -- employment rights. she also institutionalized ethnic studies. she is working to build more awareness on working to bridge the gap between ecology, race, and community. [applause] [applause] lucky fisher travis, 17, is a

youth supervisor with new ideas. he strives for greatness and also pushes and support this project leaders to envision britain is in themselves. -- greatness in themselves. [applause] [applause] michellechu, 17, is a committed youth board member and on the youth empowerment advisory board. she is a college-bound ambassador in march from mentor school, where she is a wonderful model tutor. michelle is a responsible and motivated later working to bring you up voice to her community.

[applause] nataliegranados, 18, has been a leader in the grenada movement where she had been in the budget crisis and have bravely spoken at the bourse supervisors. she has advocated for sense of participation and funding to be restored to our city's quality youth programs. [applause] [applause] roblin bonner, 18, is an outspoken member of the youth leadership. roblin graduated from downtown

high where she was a passionate role model and advocated for youth to be more engaged in the political process. [applause] [applause] -- 17, pawlenty first single occupancy sro in the chinatown development center. he also wrote a grant proposal to create a bilingual fire safety and emergency preparedness curriculum along with emergency kits for each participating sro unit. [applause]

[applause] valerie clinker is a voice of community change in front and behind the camera. she was a guest youth analyst at the third anniversary women's pioneer awards ceremony and presented gina davis with the woman pioneer award. she was also named valedictorian of the changing program. [applause]

last but not least, a nasalee, 18, spearheaded the 16th street bart installation about gender which infused her passion for art and activism. an asset is a second year career educator at the arid and engaging facilitator of the group trend magic rashid is committed to becoming a visible and zero allied to the transgender community. [applause] [applause]

>> thank you, supervisor mirkarimi, kim, mayor. once again, we are all here to honor and the phenomenal accomplishments of these 15 new four years. it has been a blessing and give to work with these wonderful warriors. thank you all for sharing this memorable day with us in honoring the 2011 youth warriors. these 15 are shining examples of what it means to be a warrior and is a gift to myself, the family, friends, nominators, and importantly, to the city and county of san francisco. we all appreciate everything you have done. thank you, from the bottom of our hearts. [applause]

the youth empowerment fund would love if you joined us for refreshments. please take some time to meet with the warriors and we also have photographs. thank you in helping us celebrate the 2011 you for your awards and ceremony.

>> every position he has held in

san francisco, he has been inclusive, he cuts across class and economics. he believes in people and human rights. he is one of the greatest guys i know, and i am so happy that he is our mayor. i bring to you mayor edwin lee. [applause] >> good afternoon. welcome. thank you very much for the introduction. i have a lot to be happy about this day because it is the 100th anniversary celebrating international women's day, and to tell you we have quite a bit to celebrate. we have probably the highest number of women commissioners ever in the history of the city today. isn't that wonderful?

[applause] we have clearly a good and growing balance of women, on the board of supervisors, commissioners, and department heads as well. i'm extremely proud to be heading up this very complicated city. [laughter] one that does not let me sleep very much, but certainly it -- i have said this in many cases, just literally these eight weeks i have fallen in love with this city even deeper because it is such a wonderful place to be. every community i visit, every corridor that we walk together, it fascinates me house on many other people who live and work here -- but even those who don't -- just love this city and they do what they can to make sure that it is running well. it is very natural that as i am

thrust with the responsibility of being mayor, that i look for talent, and i think a lot of the talent is with the women of san francisco. [applause] it has been my pleasure, of course, to have been an employee of this wonderful government some 22 years now. but to take you back, i had the pleasure of serving another mayor some years ago, one who taught me a lot of things. one of the things that i recall back in the late 1990's, the early 2000 tossed it was when i was the director of public works. there was this report that came out not to recently thereafter called the seadoll report, which

was being not taken very seriously on the status of women. one of the things that it had not been able to do was penetrate departments of the city, key departments that had been probably male dominated for many years. would you think that dpw fit that description? it is certainly did, and this report was handed to me through the mayor's office. of course, the mayor then was willie brown, and he said, what are you going to do with this? and of course the first thing you do if you read it, and you read it with the understanding that there is probably a lot of information there that will be very hard and goals and programs that will be very hard to implement at the department of public works, which had historically been a very male- dominated agency. but we made a commitment to the mayor, we made a commitment to

the commission that we would study that report and to implement every single one of those as that applied at every level of the department. i was willing to do that because around in may were a lot of other powerful women, who said it would not be that hard. all you had to do is pay attention to it, and all you had to do was not take no for an answer and all you had to do was look forward, not backward. and with those varied little pieces of advice, which took on that task and we found at the local managers. we found that many women who were trying to even get to the blue-collar work, the work on the streets, had to be treated more equally, had to have processes that were more fair. as we went up the ladder, we found it easier because we simply paid attention. in a very short time, i was able to report back to the mayor that

this program of employment the principles and making sure that that happened in the very blue- collar department of public works was going on at a very good pace. i was able to quickly identify midlevel managers who were women, identified engineers, accountants, financial people who were all there for many years, this was not invited to become part of management in an open way. and those are very easy to find once you concentrated on it. i am here to say to you that a lot of our successes today reflect efforts that i don't think we're too difficult to make once you focused on it. a lot of that had to do with the enthusiasm that this city has brought to making those goals real, and a lot of that came from the very women's summits

that were established. the women's summits, the one that i remember because i did not get a ticket to because it was so crowded it was the one that mayor brunn had introduced to our city. that was a wonderful time. i knew there was going to be a lot of things coming out of that summit because it was the hottest ticket in the city. those of you who are around, you were fighting for those tickets, and i just gave up. i said tommy what i have to do. as we look back at the videotapes, as we look at the press events that followed, we were blessed with a lot of great insights, the encouragement of women from international stature coming from all over the world, attending the summit. that makes it easy for me to say that the things i am doing now and the things i have done are credited to the press

assessor's -- are credited to the predecessors who came before. it is great for me to introduce someone who has earned this title, dear to me and all of san francisco, this year's man of the year award, will the brown jr. -- willie brown jr. [applause] >> mr. mayor, thank you very much. i am just delighted that you

were in position to be able to present this to me, and i will work and see if i can win it next year, and i will ask you to stick around. and present it to me next year in your capacity as mayor of san francisco. mayor lee, you have to note that the women of san francisco that you gave an opportunity to in your capacity as head of the department of public works and your capacity as the chief administrative officer for this city, even to this day, persons that you designated to replace you, you have allocated women to positions of importance and side of the mayor's office.

i saw them out there, one of your deputies. i don't think they call them deputies any more. every mayor has his impression of what happens in this city, but i am delighted. i am excited working with many of you here on the women's summit, when we did those over at the bus going. -- at the bosconi. when i think of all the other women who headed the maersk summit, i hope that mayor lee will find a way to do what i think will distinguish the city in more ways than one. we clearly became the first city to champion what was

supposed to being the process being led by the un. we were the first city to that with reference to women. [applause] i don't think there is any of the municipality anywhere in this country that ever matched what we did it in terms of trying to inspire women to become full participants in the pursuit of justice and equality. i am just delighted to present this award. all of you who have been responsible, i am delighted that it will go on my wall. my daughter susan -- somebody

thinks i am the man of the year. [applause] >> we have one more quick presentation. before we do, a couple of people mentioned the past women's summit. a lot of women lead that an audience. there are others. if we could just ask you to stand up, because we want to recognize you for the work you did and the history you created. thank you. [applause] >> and we have something else for mayor brown. i'm really happy to present him one of our awards today. for all those years he has been working on the death star. he has done all of the things to

support us, and we especially want to give him this award for being the first state legislator in the country to fund family planning for low-income women. in the 1970's, i don't remember the exact year, when he was on the national board of planned parenthood, we want to give him a weapon today to help us as the fundamentalists try to take those rights away from us. [laughter] [applause] >> metaphors be with you -- may the force be with you and with

us. >> a jedi warrior. now you know what was behind that masked darth vader was wearing. me. [laughter] >> at this time, i want to acknowledge a couple people outside of our committee members, white family. it is an incredible group of women who backed me up. they were there, a roomful of women who were helpful. i was able to call on people like jackie and get feedback. it is so important when we do something like this that we count on one another.

when you look around the room, i want to thank you for being part of this. everyone in this room, thank you as well. at this time i want to start our program and bring out rose, who is with kawl radio, and she is our mistress of ceremonies today. [applause] >> it is great to see a full house. i was just doing a google search on international women's day, and the photos are incredible. it does not get that much mainstream coverage, but there are actions taking place all over the country. unfortunately, there has been violence on the ivory coast, three women killed, virus in cairo. they called for in million woman marched in cairo because the women who were instrumental in the uprising want to make sure

that they're part of this going forward, and a number of men showed up and said, we don't like this. definitely look that up. there are actions happening around a thousand from places around the world. i would like to introduce our next speaker. she is an award winning writer and director, and her film won a number of awards, debuted at the cannes film festival. it launched on september 28 and 170 areas across the country. congress is pushing the international violence against women act, and she blocks frnt