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Our Nominated Charity Finding A Voice In October 2008, our Chairman Rosie Hammond, was once again honoured to accept an invitation to the Women of the Year Lunch. This is an annual event celebrating the achievements of 400 women from all walks of life in the U.K. This year the event was held at the Guildhall in London. It was at this lunch that Eve Ensler the playwright and founder (ten years ago) of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls, gave a speech about her outrage against the violence and her despair for the plight of thousands upon thousands of women and girls (some as young as 3 yrs) of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The atrocities committed are so heinous that we are unable to describe them in these pages. It is somewhat of an understatement to say that they beggar belief. Rosie received Eve Ensler’s powerful speech as a compelling call to endeavour to assist by nominating this cause as our company charity and to offer help with an awareness raising campaign which has now begun in the U.K. Our Board subsequently unanimously voted to nominate V-Day as our charity on non-political humanitarian grounds. We urge you to join us. Eve Ensler believes that what is going on in the Congo is a deliberate policy of femicide. There is sadly, little evidence to argue with that viewpoint. Soldiers and Militiamen are given impunity and awarded promotion for the atrocities perpetrated against these women and girls. These acts of rank inhumanity remain largely unreported. Fearful of further reprisals if they report these crimes to the authorities, the women and girls remain silent. They are then perceived as outcasts within their own communities – a painfully cruel reward. Please click on the link to see a 4 minute trailer of ‘The Greatest Silence’ - a film made by Lisa Jackson. This film has won an award at the Sundance film festival. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0oGGpulYsZY You may also wish to add your name to Zenna Atkins’s Facebook ... http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=48887246227 ... or indeed add it to your own Facebook. In addition, please read “Women left for dead—and the man who’s saving them”, the article Eve Ensler, V-Day’s founder, wrote for Glamour Magazine in September 2007 about her experiences at Panzi hospital, by clicking on this link: http://www.glamour.com/magazine/2007/08/rape-in-the-congo We urge you to please help raise awareness about the situation by sharing the article. You can visit www.vday.org to learn more about STOP RAPING OUR GREATEST RESOURCE, a joint campaign between Eve’s group, V-Day, and Unicef, which aims to raise awareness and funds. As a company we are dedicated to helping these strong and proud survivors in DRC and we would welcome as much support as you feel able to offer. Hopefully, you may wish to make a financial contribution either from a corporate or indeed an individual basis. It may well be that your companies are making policy decisions on which causes they will be supporting in their next fiscal year. Please take a moment to reflect on how you may react if this was happening to your mother, wife, sister or daughter – or indeed yourself if you are a woman. The U.K registered charity is called V-day –Until the Violence Stops and the registered number is 1100214. You may care to advise the Head of Corporate Responsibility within your own organisation of this particular cause. May we offer our most grateful thanks in advance for those of you who take action to do this? A group of women has formed to bring this cause into the national consciousness in the U.K and further information of our progress and support events will be reported on this page as the campaign progresses. If you wish to discuss this matter with Rosie personally, please contact the Landmarks Office on 01488 644624 or info@landmarksuk.com. They will ensure Rosie gets in touch with you immediately. At the moment, so many people we have mentioned this to say that they had no idea about the situation of the women and girls in DRC. Landmarks UK Nationwide Ltd is proud to wholeheartedly support this campaign. It is our mission to help make a contribution to creating new opportunities and resources for the women and girls both at grass-roots and a higher level. We hope to help deliver the means to help them develop the spiritual muscle required to enter and survive the grief that violence brings thus insuring a validated future for themselves and their children. Please join us by implicitly offering them your support. Please help us in our aim to shatter this silence. We as a company will continue to support Eve Ensler and her spotlight campaign until the silence has been broken. Silence is the perfect herald of Joy... William Shakespeare. |
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