See how America Ferrera, Alexis Bledel & Claire Diaz-Ortiz are standing up for women and girls

It was a great day in NYC yesterday as we launched ONE’s Women and Girls Initiative with the help of ONE supporters and actress-activists America Ferrera and Alexis Bledel, and Claire Diaz-Ortiz, head of social innovation at Twitter.

From an early morning CNN interview, to a live Twitter chat, to a live-streamed panel at the 2012 Mashable Social Good Summit — it was a jam-packed day with one message: women and girls must be at the center of poverty-fighting efforts.

America, Alexis and Claire traveled to Honduras last month with ONE to see how women and girls in that country are dealing with the challenges of living in extreme poverty, and the progress they are making. Yesterday, they joined with us in NYC to launch a new initiative to raise awareness and drive support for programs that are helping women and girls lift themselves out of extreme poverty.

So what was the launch day like?

8:49 a.m. EST – We started off the morning at CNN where America and Alexis sat down with anchor Soledad O’Brien for a live interview about the trip and ONE’s work on women and girls. It was a smart, substantive interview — if you missed it, make sure to watch it here:

12 p.m. EST – Next up was a Twitter chat with America, Alexis and Claire, our Honduras trip’s social media guru. The women took questions from people who had submitted them through ONE’s Facebook and Twitter channels. We loved the interactive nature of the conversation and got a lot of great questions from ONE members all over the world. It was great to see so much interest in the trip and how we can all do more to support women and girls who are fighting for the basic opportunity to live up to their potential. See a transcript of our chat here:

3 p.m. EST — After wrapping up the chat, we headed up to the 92cd St Y for the 2012 Mashable Social Good Summit where America,Alexis, Claire and Molly Kinder, ONE’s director of agriculture and Europe policy, took part in a panel discussion on women, poverty and social media, moderated by Mashable’s Zoe Fox. The panel opened with the debut screening of a short film by Emmy award-winning director Jesse Dylan and his kick-ass team at Wondros.

Our panel discussion at Mashable:

Our short film:

It was exciting to see the footage from a trip we took just a month ago turned into a fantastic short film that really brings to life the vitality, power and passion of the women we met in La Esperanza, La Ceiba and Tegucigalpa (thank you Lina Martinez!). We can’t thank them enough for being a part of our film and our effort to put women and girls squarely in the center of the fight against poverty, where they belong.

Stay tuned for further updates on our women and girls work, including from the ONE Moms …