Nemam was a heart surgeon and a founder of Joint Help for Kurdistan and she was my friend, my guide in Kurdistan. Really I would follow her anywhere (and did). Nemam was filled with Joy. She met everyone with Joy. She rescued with Joy. She performed surgery with Joy. She held wailing girls with Joy....
One Billion Rising activists are calling for RISING GARDENS, a global grassroots action for revival, restoration and transformation, making the connection between violence against women and destruction of the earth. “Rising Gardens” is a defiant creative call for revival, restoration, and transformation. Activists are creating artistic events around the globe this Thursday, Earth Day, April 22 and have released a new short film in honor of Earth Day featuring activists from Austria, Bangladesh, Eswatini, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malawi, Nigeria, United States, Portugal, Singapore, Taiwan, UK, Philippines, and Zambia. ...
Photo Credit: Paula Allen In April 2002, 19 years ago, the Tasaru Ntomonok Initiative / V-Day Safe House for the Girls Opened in Narok, Kenya. Tasaru Ntomonok is a grassroots initiative that created and runs the V-Day Safe House for the Girls in the southern Rift Valley in Narok County, providing shelter and educating girls running away from “the cut” (Female Genital Mutilation or FGM) and early childhood marriage. Led by Agnes Pareyio, the founder of Tasaru Ntomonok, Chair of the Anti-FGM Board of Kenya, and UN Person of the Year for Kenya (2005), the center bravely confronts the cultural practice of female...
City of Knowledge (CKO) — formerly Promoting Women’s Capability by Education Center — is an education center for girls and women in Kabul, Afghanistan where women turn their pain to power. Rising in the face of four decades of war that has left a huge population of Afghan women illiterate and several generations of women deprived of education, City of Knowledge is an education center for girls and women that offers courses in Computers, Science, Literacy, Arts, English, and Women’s rights. Graduates go on to pursue university and the careers of their choice, becoming the future doctors, engineers, lawyers, scientists,...
According to the Sentencing Project, the number of incarcerated women increased by more than 700%, rising from a total of 26,378 in 1980 to 222,455 in 2019.1 Though many more men are in prison than women, the rate of growth for female imprisonment has been twice as high as that of men since 1980. Nationally, about 1 in 8 (13%) of all individuals released from state prisons and more than 1 in 6 (18%) jail releases are women.2 We rarely hear the stories of women after they have been home and what their lives look like now. I want to highlight three...
The pandemic hit hard and restricted our travels, so I have not had the opportunity to travel and report on criminal justice reform issues since early 2020. This was my first time visiting Washington D.C. and I was proud to be doing it in a capacity to advocate for incarcerated women’s release from prison. There are over 200,00 women incarcerated in prisons across the United States. The United States incarcerates1 more people than any other country in the world. On March 12th, I traveled to DC to participate in a campaign with The National Council for Women and Girls to...
City of Knowledge (CKO) — formerly Promoting Women’s Capability by Education Center — is an education center for girls and women in Kabul, Afghanistan where women turn their pain to power. Rising in the face of four decades of war that has left a huge population of Afghan women illiterate and several generations of women deprived of education, City of Knowledge is an education center for girls and women that offers courses in Computers, Science, Literacy, Arts, English, and Women’s rights. Graduates go on to pursue university and the careers of their choice, becoming the future doctors, engineers, lawyers, scientists,...
Alianza Nacional de Campesinas is proud to be a part of the One Billion Rising against gender based violence and exploitation. We recognize this year's theme of Rising Gardens as an acknowledgment of the work that we do on a daily basis, the work of cultivating and nourishing the land so that in turn, the land can nourish us. As a community, campesinas across the U.S. face many struggles, from grueling working conditions where we are exposed to all of the weather elements as well as pesticides; lack of access to health care and government assistance; harassment and violence in...
Rodrigo Melgarejo, Grace Frutos, Bianca Cunningham, Brandon King, and Maya Lazzaro – five United States citizens on a cultural exchange to Chile, were arrested and illegally deported from the country. The US delegation was part of a cultural exchange between women and men movement leaders across North America and Chile. The goal of the exchange was to learn about the experiences of people of color across geopolitical regions in the areas of narrative shift, communal self-determination and citizen journalism. On Thursday March 11, the five US delegation members were arrested while getting off their return flight to Santiago from Temuco. Temuco is...
We stand against anti-Asian violence and with our sisters and brothers in the Asian and Pacific Islander community. We stand with Asian women who are disproportionately impacted by hate, discrimination and xenophobia that has increased during the pandemic. We cherish the wisdom of our elders, and in particular elders from the Asian community who are being targeted by senseless acts of violence. We stand against white supremacy until the violence stops. -V (formerly Eve Ensler), Susan, Christine, Monique, Purva, Tony, Aja, Carl, Leila, Roslyn & Swetha READ more about how to help HERE»...