White Ribbon News

We’re having a few days rest but here are a few New Year plans-
Start a very active Music campaign with a full time worker
Collaborate with other campaigns to develop alternative mazculinity analysis
Send at least 1000 Valentie cards in a Valentine campaign
Develop a vigorous LGBT anti inter personal violence White Ribbon campaign
Create great materials and activities with young people in Dewsbury
Write a White Ribbon campaigning guide
Finish our new development strategy

Help with any of theses will be welcomed

Happy and Safe Non Violent New Year

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A great  adn busy day on 18th December when 4 White ribbon campaign staff descended on Castle hall School to work with the entire Year 9 group in an Alternative Curriculum  day.  180 young people worked hard, and  the boys working with Chris adn Jonathan learnt about the experience of young people in refuges, and the difficulty of leaving an abusive relationship,and the work of White Ribbon Campaign in involving young men in cultural change. They designed T- shirts putting their feelings into words. They only had about 10 minutes to work on the t-shirts and slogans included Walk Away from Violence -  End violence against Women- Stop the Violence against WOmen and Children.A group of the boys were interested in carrying on the campaign, and we expect to meet with them in the New Year as part of an after school project .At the same time the girls were working on awareness issues with Holly and Francesca

On Tuesday 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Mike Gapes joined over 50 male and female Labour MPs standing outside Parliament to highlight the importance of more being done to end violence against women. The MPs wore a white ribbon, to highlight that violence against women is not only a women’s issue, but an issue that should concern us all. Read more http://www.mikegapes.org.uk/?paged=2

Although the 16 days of action against violence is nearly finished White Ribbon Campaign activities never do. We’ve had a very succesful two weeks campaigning and developing adn have now passed 1,000 members in Facebook (if you add in White Ribbon Scotland members to White Ribbon UK) BUT we still barely exist in terms of affecting the attitudes and attention of the majority.
Please help us to make sure that we achieve this in 3 years not 20 years by getting involved in our dynamic exciting campaigning.
If you can think of an innovative way of marketing a future without violence against women get in touch with us
This year we’ve had endorsements by football players and managers, Walks in womesn shoes, Marches, Radio 2 Airtime, Conferences abd Handprinting banners.
We need new t-shirt and poster designs
In January we’re starting our Music and Clubs campaign - why not help shape it and deliver it?!

Last Monday we went to the Gender Matter Conference in the Emirates Stadium, London, during which many areas have been considered for a gender Equality relevance in our society. The event, organised by Cambridge Education @ Islington, has not only given an interesting overview of approaches and strategic directions to create a society without gender discrimination or prejudices, but the programme has also run roundtable briefing and discussion around domestic violence, forced marriage and honourkilling issues. The main voices were those of Marc Rawlston, Arsenal and England Women’s Team Captain and Jim Blair from the Metropolitan Police, and even if we didn’t run any presentation we have been delighted to realise that many other panellists have mentioned WRC UK several times, highlighting our work and campaigning towards this gender specific violence.

While two of us were in London, Chris the Executive Director was in Scotland, attending another exciting conference, Safe, Dumfries & Galloway Domestic Abuse and Violence against Women Partnership, 240 people debating, most of them male delegates from the police and workshops about violence reduction unit and working with perpetrators.

WRC was among the participants of an important conference settled up in the Inter-Parliamentary Union headquarters in Geneva “A parliamentary response to violence against women”: Chris Green, the WRC UK Executive Director, has been one of the panellist playing a part in the event and running a session titled Partnership, working with men. He spoke to an international audience, starting from imagining a world as it will be when there is no violence against women. All representatives, fully aware of the extent of the violences, showed a great interest in debating around the importance of working with men and ended by making a queue to put their hands on our hand kit printing “These hands are not for hurting”…from an Algerian Member of the National Assembly to the Minister of Women, Family and Community Development from Malaysia. Even those who work in the centre were attracted and pleased to be involved.
Other new things coming soon on the website (read about “blow the whistle campaign”), new ideas around further music and nightclub campaign, development of a team of ambassadors and much more…we are working hard to expand the campaign as fast as we can!

Sunday is usually day of rest but not for those who believe that violence against women must be fighted!

The International 16 Days of Action opposing violence against women rely on thousand of events in over 154 countries with over 2000 participating organisations.
The dates (from November the 25th, the International Day to Eradicate Violence against Women, to December the 10th, International Human Rights Day) symbolically link the issues and show how that such a violence is a violation of a woman’s human rights.

After the White Ribbon Day, the 16 days busy calendar has been an opportunity for individuals and groups around the world to call for the elimination of all form of violent behaviour by highlighting the nature and prevalence of violence, showing solidariety among women around the world, putting the issue on the political & media agenda and streghtening local work aimed at tackling violence against women.

During these years WRC UK spread all across the country, from North to South. The rapid take off of the WRC campaign in UK shows that there are good man everywhere who are outraged that so many of our sisters and daughters, our mothers and friends live in fear of violence.

You can actively hightlight the issue in any way that you can. Your voice counts!

High heels were donned by supporter of White Ribbon Campaign yesterday in Liverpool.

The Lord Mayor, Steve Rotheram was one of many people who walked for the streets of the city to raise funds for the campaign and to take action on such an important day as November the 25th.

They walked down Bold Street to Williamson Square during the fundraiser in order to make sure the people of Liverpool and Merseyside never condone this behaviour in any way.

The event itself was a bit tongue in cheek, but the message is a very serious one within society. Cllr Rotheram said:
“The idea was to walk a mile in a woman’s shoes and, although I did not get that far, it was still very difficult, I felt like I was on stilts!”

The event was just the first date of our busy day…in the afternoon we had an interview with Radio City, one of the UK’s most succesful radio stations, that gave us the opportunity to highlight the issue. Discussing with them for about 15 minutes we hope the message has reached many other people in the Merseyside area as well.
Then, in the evening we were supporting the Darlington FC on their home match, which opened with a ballon launch from the ground (the numer of the ballons commemorating all the women killed by their parterns in the UK), as a symbol to underline once again the support of football world to end violence against women.

The events were part of the 16 days of activity to raise the charity’s profile.

         

We’ve had  a busy few days  but some great other stuff going on

Jonathan Nash went  toi help run the collection and activities at Bristol Rovers FC, while Chris Green went to the WHite Ribbon Ball in Liverpool, to a White Ribbon Day in HACkney Town Hall, and to the  Men’s Vigil supporting the women on the Reclaim the Night march through London which was bigger than ever .
These are just a few of the other events I’ve discovered that are happening or have happened in the last few days

Lots of picturtes to put on the website
Every Paramedic in Wales is weraing a White ribbon on Tuesday
Every NAS UWT school got sent a leaflet from Head Office explaining WHite Ribbon DAy and asking them to take part in action
There is a photocall for male  Westmister MP’s on Tuesday
2 big Health service meetings in London will be wearing white ribbons
At least 10 Premiership managers wore their ribbons over the weekend
and many more clubs in the lower divisions
The Lord Mayor of Liverpool promised me at the Liverpool White RIbbon Ball that he would get the Mayor of Manchester to wear a ribbon on  Monday and that he would try to take part in the White Ribbon Walk in the shopping centre in Liverpool on Tuesday
Reclaim the Night in London was fantastic and there was a small contingent of men supporting the reclaim the Night March

The sports campaign is one of the biggest areas that we work in this year and we hope to highlight such important issue to challenge the acceptance of male violence towards women which exists in society.

We are aware that sports players and managers are particularly positive role models to young men, who are the largest group of perpetrators of this kind of violence. That is why we asked to many Football Club to support our campaign.We encouraged their manager and frontline staff to wear a White Ribbon badge for the games around the 25^th November, which has been designated by the United Nations as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Liverpool and Everton football clubs are typical examples of positive White Ribbon activity: theirs manager, David Moyes and Rafael Benitez will be wearing white ribbons for their home matches on 16^th and 22^nd November and there will be articles in the match day programmes but also many other FC will do the same confirming the clubs support.