April 26, 2008

SkirtSports, a retailer for sport apparel for women and children, has recently put together a campaign that will help their customers give back to the organizations and charities that mean the most to them.

Help Us Help You Help Others is a campaign unlike most others I have seen. Not only can you donate to a charity and help that charity help others in need, but you, as a SkirtSports customer, can choose the charity that Help Us Help You Help Others donates to.

Over a period of a month, SkirtSports asks people to nominate their favorite charity and the charity that receives the most submitted nominations will receive a $500 donation from the SkirtSports Help Us Help You Help Others campaign plus whatever amount is received through your donations, which range from donations of $5 to $100.

For the month of April and in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Help Us Help You Help Others will be donating to SOAR (Speaking Out Against Rape) SOAR is an amazing non-profit organization which runs national awareness, education and prevention programs to help survivors of sexual abuse reclaim their voice, confidence and lives. You can learn more about SOAR at their website here.

In order to donate to SOAR through Help Us Help You Help Others, go here and select the amount you would like to donate. 100% of your donations go straight to SOAR; there is no tax or fees of any kind and it gets donated directly. As an added bonus, SOAR has a special promotion through SkirtSports where if you buy from their website you receive 10% off on all online purchases by using the promo code SOAR–and while you’re at it, don’t forget to make a donation to SOAR.

April 13, 2008

I recently came across the Teddy Tour, which is run by Megan from Imaginif and Leigh from All for Women; both are truly excellent sites.

Teddy Tour is about giving survivors of childhood sexual abuse a voice through a really unique concept–plush teddy bears. It doesn’t matter if you are male or female or what age you are now; if you were sexually abused as a child, you are able to take part in the tour.

The process is simple–You fill out a teddy tag (don’t worry, it’s completely anonymous and your name will not appear on your tag) either by filling out the form to send one instantly or you can download and print out this tag and send it out in the mail. You can also make your own tag or decorate the mail-in tag to personalize it a bit more.

After your tag is received, it will be put on a plush teddy bear, a picture of it will be taken for the website and it will then be sold at Imaginif where all proceeds go straight to a survivor of child abuse.

This is an excellent project, I love it. I filled out a teddy tag for myself and hope that all survivors of childhood sexual abuse will do so as well, it’s an excellent cause and not only are you reclaiming your voice and rising above your abuse, you are also helping other survivors in the process. What could be better than that?

April 11, 2008

I thought I was too late with this, but luckily, I’m not!

This Sunday, April 13, is the 5th Annual Race to Stop the Silence, presented by the Ms. Foundation for Women and The Washington Post, in an effort to raise awareness and stop the silence surrounding child sexual abuse. It will take place at 8:30am in Anacostia Park in Washington DC.

If you are around the Washington DC area, I cannot urge you enough to go and be part of this amazing activist effort. Child sexual abuse is a silent epidemic and it is only growing more rapidly out of control. If you wish to take part in the 10k race and the 5K pledge walk you can register either today, tomorrow or Sunday before the race at a tent near the skating rink at Anacostia Park, which will open at 6:30am. Download the registration form here and bring it to the balcony of the Old Post Office Pavilion at 1100 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. Also, you can download the agenda of activities here. (PDF)

This is definitely a great cause; for those of you who are already signed up and ready to go, good luck; and for the rest of you, go download the registration form!

April 5, 2008

Searching for Angela Shelton is a documentary made by none other than Angela Shelton. It started as a survey of women in America who shared her name, but evolved into a mission to end sexual violence when she found that over half of the women she interviewed for her documentary had been either raped, beaten or molested sometime in their lives. If you haven’t already seen this movie, I cannot urge you enough to buy the DVD, it is absolutely phenomenal. But here’s the best news of all…

During the month of April, which is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, to raise awareness about sexual violence, you can watch Searching for Angela Shelton for free! All you have to do is go to Angela Shelton TV and click on the second tab over on top of the video player, click on “Searching” and the entire movie is the second option down.

I personally love this movie, I’ve seen it no less than 100 times, easy; it’s always the movie I go to when I need to get inspired or motivated to write something inspiring. It brings the comfort needed to survivors to keep going in the fight against sexual violence and it opens the eyes of those who may not know too much about the pandemic that is affecting so many men and women all over the world every day.

Go ahead, Watch the movie!

Some parts may be triggering, so if you find yourself in need of help or support, check out RAINN or the supportive community at After Silence.

April 3, 2008

Today is A Day to End Sexual Violence. Courtesy of abyss2hope, today is the second annual Blog Against Sexual Violence Day.

I’ve been thinking for a few days about what I wanted to write about. I cover sexual violence quite a bit here, but I wanted this to be a bit different and have deeper meaning to me, so I finally decided to share a piece of my own creative writing that tells a little but about my childhood and my own past with sexual violence.

This is a short prose piece entitled Stonewalled and was written on May 8, 2005. It was featured in North Eastern Pennsylvania’s Women’s Resource Center’s “An Empty Place at the Table” art gallery.

Stonewalled

Go brush your teeth and I’ll be right up to tuck you in.

And with that statement, you were gone. The door slammed, the car’s ignition hissed, and the tires roared away from our townhouse apartment - home for needy welfare mothers who spend their earnings from their spread your leg careers on “I’m sick of feeling like this, I want to be someone else” hallucinogens and “My veins are pretty empty and could use a lift of spirits” syringes. Where were you this time? Because I’m still in bed peering from the turned-down comforter to see you and smell the musty scent on your breath, on my face, on your clothes. When do you think you’re coming back?

This is because you couldn’t mother a pair of mistakes; the first a little more damned than the second. If the men had the money you would introduce them to your shining star concubine - age’s six to twelve. Sifting into nothing but a corpse; unable to do anything but lay there, engulfed in a wonderland of dead fairies that all look identical. Laying there as if nothing happened; gyrating into outlandish figures - all bleeding from one sacred pore.

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