Violence Against Women Awareness Month

In October, we kick off Violence Against Women (VAW) Awareness Month on the blogosphere.

VAW Awareness Month began as a completely voluntary, yet cohesive online campaign in 2011, when a group of dedicated bloggers/volunteers decided to band together and raise awareness about this social anathema that isn’t going away in a hurry. The effort included blog posts highlighting victims’ stories, statistics, and the urgent need for intervention and prevention, individual blogger write-ups across the blogosphere, as also tweets and a Facebook awareness page to bolster outreach efforts.

VAW Awareness month is back this year and like last year, its organisers hope to make this entire month one about raising awareness regarding the issues of gender-specific violence women in India face. Specifically, the initiative covers: domestic violence, violence against the girl child including deprivation, sexual violence, emotional/psychological abuse, dowry-related violence including bride burning, female infanticide, and acid attacks.

Since the campaign last year, we have seen gender violence, sexual and otherwise, reach a new nadir, with the Guwahati molestation, the statements by people in authority either with the police, the government, or women’s bodies about ‘western culture and dressing’ causing rapes and molestations, and increasing attacks on women by spurned lovers, by random lotharios who have burnt and killed girls for resisting rape, and more such horrific instances.

The campaign this year has been planned with insight and care, and will be implemented across the social media platforms used before, namely Facebook, blogs and Twitter, all through October. In addition to the main VAW Awareness blog, bloggers will also post on their individual weblogs. Twitter chats will be conducted on relevant topics by representatives from organizations such as Prajnya, Bell Bajao and FlexiMoms. Offline meets are also in the process of being arranged by the latter 2 organizations in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.

The VAW Awareness team welcomes volunteers, as always. Any assistance or voluntary expertise is very welcome. Please feel free to share this post with anyone you think might be keen to participate. We invite blog posts, twitter support and any other support you could
extend to help us raise awareness and sensitise people to the issues of gender violence.

Here’s where you can find the campaign:

Blog: http://vawawareness.wordpress.com/

Twitter: @VAWawareness

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Violence-Against-Women-Awareness-Month/105254826233654

Come, let us try to make a difference.