Dearest Activists, Friends & Supporters,
It’s been an unbelievable year. Our 20th year was marked by fierce activism, which turned pain into power and brought our movement even further along in the fight to end gender-based violence. Each day, we were moved by your passionate commitment to ending violence against all women and girls (cisgender, transgender and those who hold fluid identities that are subject to gender-based violence). By your ingenuity. By your courage.
20 years since Eve’s play The Vagina Monologues shattered taboos, the stakes could not be higher. V-Day and One Billion Rising activists around the world are taking the call to heart, working tirelessly to end harassment, rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation and sex slavery.
Your friendship, activism and support has fueled an unmatched movement that is bravely supporting grassroots anti-violence organizations and activists, opening safe houses, and sustaining domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers as they received unprecedented numbers of survivors seeking help. It is also bringing about legislation supporting women and girls. Active in over 200 countries, having raised well over $100 million, V-Day is a global force.
This year, our work has deconstructed long-held assumptions surrounding gender and identity, centralizing the experiences of survivors and women who face marginalization and creating dialogue about patriarchy, its underpinnings, and what it creates in its aftermath.
Through countless V-Day benefit productions of The Vagina Monologues and A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer, Risings, and CITY OF JOY screenings, activists are working on a range of issues across the globe. By taking an intersectional lens to the most pressing injustices impacting their safety, rights and economic viability, activists are connecting the dots and demonstrating to others that gender-based violence is not just a woman’s issue, but a structural and systemic problem that must be dismantled at every level of society.
Through our 2019 Spotlight on Women in Prison, Detention Centers, and Formerly Incarcerated Women, and by inviting activists to amplify and lift up the often unheard and excluded voices of survivors, activists and groups in their communities, V-Day activists are confronting issues that have too long been ignored.
And there has also been SO MUCH JOY! As we write, a graduation is taking place, bringing the number of women who have healed themselves and gone through the City of Joy to return to their communities in Congo as leaders to 1200. The City of Joy continues to serve as a transformational center and continues to be celebrated widely with the global release of the film CITY OF JOY on Netflix; the V-World Farm is growing and thriving. And, our beloved friend, V-Man and co-creator of City of Joy, Dr. Denis Mukwege, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with our Yazidi sister-activist Nadia Murad. Their achievement was a defining moment for the anti-gender-based violence movement and we couldn’t be prouder!
Photo Credit: Paula Allen
As we look forward to 2019 and we reflect upon our 20th year and the V-movement that we’ve created together, we hope you will continue to stand with us, to courageously hold the space for this work, and remain undeterred. We are always with you, and our gratitude is endless.
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Our movement was made for this moment. Your support makes our work possible.
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With all our V-love,
Eve, Susan, Christine, Monique, Purva, Tony, Carl, Kristina, Leila, & Anju
P.S. If your gift is already on its way, thank you!
31 December is the last day to make charitable donations in order to claim them on your 2018 tax return. V-Day is a top-rated charity on Guidestar and Charity Navigator.