By My-Linh Kunst. The following speech was read by outgoing AWC President, My-Linh Kunst, during AWC’s 2018 Annual General Meeting. The meeting was held at Berlin Festsaal Stadtmission on December 10, 2018. Approximately 70 members were in attendance. Eleanor Roosevelt, our champion of human rights once said, “The future belongs to those who believe in the …
by Molly Moylan Brown Thrust a female private part into the title of a theater piece and you’ve started a resistance. You incite perplexity and trepidation, an acute sense of taboo—resistance. It begins with language, the words we say and the words we avoid. Vagina. Why does that word assault us when we hear or …
by Allegra Silbiger, AWC Berlin member When you bring consciousness to anything, things begin to shift. Eve Ensler We become immune. Overexposed to shocking statistics and imagery, we are no longer shocked. Overwhelmed by devastating truths, we shut down. For those fortunate enough to live at a comfortable distance from violence, the numbers and statistics …
by Jennifer Post Dräger, AWC Berlin member I first encountered Theater for Social Change as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Professor Patrick Sims led a troupe of diverse students in the Theater for Cultural and Social Awareness program. University departments and local nonprofits alike engaged the troupe to help their community …
by Sharon Kuckuck, AWC Berlin member Is it gender-based violence if the victim is never touched? As an adolescent growing up in the 70’s in New York City, I experienced more than half a dozen episodes of men exposing themselves to me in public, most often while masturbating. Typically portrayed in the media as a …
by Vanessa Hansen, AWC Berlin member How do you prevent Gender-Based Violence? By raising mighty girls who grow up to become mighty women! The Girl Scouts program, beginning as early as age 5, provides opportunities to build girls of courage, confidence, and character. It empowers them to make confident decisions about their own lives and …
by Tabitha Peyton Wood Claudine lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was forced to drop out of secondary school when her father died and she had to start working. Soon after that she met her husband and they had three children together. But he abused her and she left. One evening she was …
by Samantha R. Lattof, AWC Berlin member “Why was she beaten? Did she steal something?” asked the triage nurse as we arrived in the Accident Centre. I was well aware of the stigma and insults that female kayayei migrants experience in Accra; it was a common theme that arose in the interviews we conducted. But …
by My-Linh Kunst, AWC Berlin member There is a little known form of Gender Based Violence (GBV) that affects 700 million women and girls globally. Every March for the last three years, I have attended the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women as part of the FAWCO delegation*. It is an opportunity for …
by Jennifer Padfield, AWC Berlin member The United Nations Development Fund for Women estimates that at least one of every three women globally will be beaten, raped, or otherwise abused during her lifetime. In most cases, the abuser is a member of her own family.[1] Simone is a twenty year old woman with two children …