V-Day is a global activist movement aiming to end violence against women and girls, founded by the activist and playwright Eve Ensler, who wrote the iconic play, The Vagina Monologues. The movement’s vision is to “see a world where women live safely and freely,” and they motivate women from all over the world to act and protest gender-based violence and issues such as incest, rape, and human trafficking.
The first V-Day took place on February 14th, 1998, in NYC. Since then, more than 5,000 V-Day events have happened in more than 200 countries. Each year, V-Day events focus on a particular group of women. In 2011, for instance, the spotlight was on the women and girls of Haiti, and in 2019, it was on women in prison, detention centers, and formerly incarcerated women.
Around the date of V-Day, there are performances of Ensler’s play, The Vagina Monologues, as well as workshops, conversation circles, and screenings of documentaries about violence against women.
To this day, the funds raised from the events enabled to promote anti-violence programs, shelters, and safe houses for girls and women worldwide, support anti-violence programs in over 12,000 communities, including Congo, Kenya, Iraq, Egypt, and Haiti.
The movement also founded One Billion Rising – the largest mass action campaign for ending violence against women.
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