V-Day Annual Report 2018 | Page 38

V-DAY GRANTS DOLPHIN ANTI-RAPE AND AIDS CONTROL Dolphin Anti-Rape and AIDS Control continued their ongoing anti-violence and self defense training work for students and teachers in Kenya. Their life-saving works impacts thousands of young people and their families each year. It also empowers teachers and youth workers with the training to pass on self-defense skills to their students. PROMOTING WOMEN’S CAPABILITY BY EDUCATION (PWCE) provides courses in many different fields, including computer classes, literacy, and science. In response to domestic violence, poverty, and hardships of life in a war-ridden country, the center also gives support by holding weekly seminars on issues impacting women and girls. Through the center, students are able to pursue the college and careers of their choice, becoming “the future doctors, engineers, lawyers, scientists, artists, and technical experts” who give hope to Kabul. V-DAY SAFE HOUSE FOR THE GIRLS TASARU NTOMONOK INITIATIVE/ AGNES PAREYIO Since it opened in 2002, Tasaru Ntomonok Initiative has been a safe house for girls fleeing Female Genital Mutilation and early marriage, and an educational hub for the Kenyan community about the damage and impact these forms of violence have on the girls and on the community. 52 girls resided at the safe house during this holiday season and have been sent to school. 140 girls between the ages of 12-16 years took part in 2 Alternative Right of Passage training so that they could graduate into adulthood without the cut. The center also continues to run 2 workshops a month in the community for 100 people each about the dangers of early childhood marriage and FGM. Support has also helped staff continue with training to help improve operations and infrastructure at the center. A grant went to support SHE an, important choreoplay written and choreographed by dancer Jinah Parker, and produced by longtime V-Day activist Kevin Powell. The piece, about sexual violence and healing, tells the story of mothers, daughters, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, cousins, friends and acquaintances we each know. GABRIELA, A nationwide alliance of more than 200 women’s organizations, supports groups of Pinays and non-Pinays across the globe. Active in national Filipino politics through the GABRIELA Women’s Party, leaders in justice for migrant and domestic workers, and grassroots activists throughout the Philippines addressing issues of militarization, climate change, gender disparity and corruption, the alliance is dedicated to the mission of achieving women’s freedom and true democracy. GABRIELA has been a leader in One Billion Rising, using the tools and platform year round to amplify their calls demanding an end to poverty and to the neoliberal policies that keep poverty and economic violence and exploitation in place; demanding an end to militarization, mining, sex and human trafficking, electronic violence, and labor export policies that force 600 Filipinos a day (80% of whom are women) to work abroad as domestic workers, nannies, caregivers; demanding an end to foreign intervention of the US and the Visiting Forces Agreement; demanding an end to contractualization of workers and demanding higher wages and work benefits; demanding an end to commercialization of education, of privatization of social services, of home demolitions and plunder of our environment. A grant supported THE LAURA FLANDERS SHOW, which, on a weekly basis, features people with innovative, power-shifting solutions to the problems of our time, including violence against women and girls and white supremacy. A grant to the GULF SOUTH DISASTER RESPONSE went towards Project South and the US Human Rights Network to respond to long-term recovery from the climate violence of hurricanes in the Gulf South (Harvey, Irma, and others). Funds benefited locally based women’s leadership, predominantly women of color, and young people who are working alongside community efforts to contend with the impacts of hurricanes, flooding, and violence related to the extreme climate crisis. 300 girls, women, boys, and men of all ages were served. THE NEW PRESS, a publisher of books in the social justice space, received a grant to distribute 2,200 copies of its new book, IN A DAY’S WORK: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers, to 2,200 individuals attending the 2018 New York Women’s Foundation Celebrating Women breakfast, which brings together women who are politically and philanthropically engaged in issues related to gender equity and safety. MATTERS OF THE EARTH, an international People of Color collective of educators and multi-sector practitioners who use their skills to build strategy and tools to transform organizational spaces received a grant to support Natalie Jeffers’ work as a grassroots leader across transnational movement spaces and to connect the US, UK and European feminists movements and intersectional/Black feminist organizers responding to the impact of Conservative rule, Brexit/Trump and the rise of the Global far right. It also supported workshops, podcasts, community sit downs, drop ins, teach ins, performance and political events across 5 UK cities.