Dear V-Friends,

vday-sacramento2As the year draws closer to an end, we can’t help but think back on the improbable journey The Vagina Monologues and V-Day cast us on, almost twenty years ago. Our movement has grown rapidly, stretching to all corners of the earth, igniting activism in over 200 countries and raising well over $100 million to end violence against all women and girls. We couldn’t have dreamed it.

As we write to you, activists are busy planning and rehearsing, readying their artistic productions and Risings to bring the issue of violence against women and girls front and center in their communities. The collective impact of this work is profound.

We have seen how it activates people’s hearts and minds, leaving lasting reverberations – some that are felt seismically, and others that are felt like the flap of a butterfly’s wing. Both are powerful, both are necessary. They are the ingredients of cultural change.

Culture change that The Vagina Monologues called forward 20 years ago. Culture change needed now.

Support the global movement to end violence against women and girls. DONATE to V-Day >

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This holiday season, as we take stock and look ahead, we are sending you our deepest, most heartfelt gratitude. Your devotion, your ingenuity, your bravery over twenty years has supported anti-violence organizations, opened safe houses, kept shelters from closing and brought about legislation supporting the safety of women and girls. It exploded taboos and assumptions about women’s sexuality and people living on the margins of society, bringing survivors out of the darkness and creating the foundation, and then the layers on top of it, for movements like #MeToo to take foot and for the recent avalanche of survivors’ stories to keep cascading.

Your support of this work brought the issue of violence against women to the front page and into the global discourse. Your belief in the power of art to transform thinking is just as important today as it was twenty years ago.

If we have learned anything over these past two decades, it is that at times of crisis – when things feel the most broken – we need to show up, and show up big. It’s at these moments that true transformation can happen. The window is small, but the potential infinite. Our movement was born for this moment. Your support makes our work possible. Please consider giving to V-Day this season.

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From our small, raucous, international team scattered across the globe to you, out there as individuals or with a group of fellow activists, we give thanks for you this V-season. Knowing that you are doing the hard, everyday work of keeping ending violence against women and girls at the forefront of conversations makes our work that much more meaningful. Seeing the joy and creativity you bring to it makes it that much more beautiful. Witnessing your courage gives us our own.

With all our V-love,
Eve, Susan, Christine, Monique, Purva, Tony, Carl, Kristina, Leila, & Anju

Support the global movement to end violence against women and girls.
DONATE to V-Day >

31 December is the last day to make charitable donations in order to claim them on your 2017 tax return. V-Day is a top rated charity on Guidestar and Charity Navigator.

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