Orange your Window - a yearly event around the world!

Sylvia Heywood from Soroptimist International North Shore

Please support this global campaign to help raise awareness of the United Nations 16 Days of Activism against Gender based Violence. Gender based violence occurs in the family and in the general community, and affects the ability of women and girls to reach their full potential and participate in society. Domestic abuse is an incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening, degrading and violent behaviour, including sexual violence, in the majority of cases by a partner or ex-partner, but also by a family member or career, and most commonly experienced by women. Abuse can also take the forms of physical assault, psychological abuse, social abuse, and financial abuse. The colour orange symbolises a brighter future, free of violence. It also serves as a means of demonstrating solidarity in eliminating all forms of violence and it is therefore used as the colour for this campaign.
Various activities are arranged around the world to draw attention to the need for continuing action to eliminate violence against women, projects to enable women and their children to escape violence and campaigns to educate people about the consequences of violence against women. Locally, women’s groups organise walks, communal meals, fundraising activities and present research on violence against women in their own communities.
Please let me know if you are keen to dress your shop window in orange either on or between the 25 November which is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and the first day of the 16 Days of Activism against gender-based violence to the 10 December, which is the United Nations Human Rights Day. You can email me at sinorthshore@siswp.org and I will send you posters etc for your window.
The SI North Shore members will be acknowledging this campaign by photographing all the shop windows, dressed in orange, to pick the best dressed windows that are supporting this campaign.