Big Beautiful Women (BBW) Admirers

​The **BuildHers+ Mentorship Initiative Graduation** marks the culmination of the first-ever mentorship program of AWS User Group BuildHers+ Philippines — a milestone celebration honoring the growth, achievements, and resilience of our mentors and mentees. ​This event brings together the entire BuildHers+ community to recognize the meaningful connections formed, the skills developed, and the breakthroughs made throughout the mentorship journey. Over the past months, mentors generously shared their expertise while mentees embraced opportunities for learning, confidence-building, and career advancement. ​The graduation program will feature the awarding of certificates, reflections from mentors and mentees, special messages from community leaders, and a final gathering to celebrate the success of completing this transformative journey. ​As we conclude the inaugural run of the BuildHers+ Mentorship Initiative, we honor not only the accomplishments of every participant but also the collective commitment to uplifting women and LGBTQIA+ individuals in the tech industry. ​Together, we celebrate how far we’ve come — and the brighter, more inclusive future we are building. 🎓👩🏻‍💻

**Our February novel is: Julia by Sandra Newman** **This month is a classic, dystopian, fiction, literary fiction, women’s fiction, and science fiction novel. The book is 394 pages in print and 14 hours and 20 minutes on audiobook.** **An imaginative, feminist, and brilliantly relevant-to-today retelling of Orwell’s 1984, from the point of view of Winston Smith’s lover, Julia, by critically acclaimed novelist Sandra Newman.** Julia Worthing is a mechanic, working in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. It’s 1984, and Britain (now called Airstrip One) has long been absorbed into the larger trans-Atlantic nation of Oceania. Oceania has been at war for as long as anyone can remember, and is ruled by an ultra-totalitarian Party, whose leader is a quasi-mythical figure called Big Brother. In short, everything about this world is as it is in Orwell’s 1984. All her life, Julia has known only Oceania, and, until she meets Winston Smith, she has never imagined anything else. She is an ideal citizen: cheerfully cynical, always ready with a bribe, piously repeating every political slogan while believing in nothing. She routinely breaks the rules, but also collaborates with the regime when necessary. Everyone likes Julia. Then one day she finds herself walking toward Winston Smith in a corridor and impulsively slips him a note, setting in motion the devastating, unforgettable events of the classic story. Julia takes us on a surprising journey through Orwell’s now-iconic dystopia, with twists that reveal unexpected sides not only to Julia, but to other familiar figures in the 1984 universe. This unique perspective lays bare our own world in haunting and provocative ways, just as the original did almost seventy-five years ago.