An Opportunity to Help Out With Domestic Violence

A while back my sister introduced me to this really cool company called Sevenly. Basically what Sevenly does is design t-shirts. But these aren’t just any shirts. These are shirts that seek to raise awareness and funds for different charities around the world. Each week they produce a shirt for a charity. These shirts are only available for 7 days. And for every shirt sold, $7 goes to the charity.

I picked this week to bring Sevenly to your attention because these week’s shirt is bringing in proceeds for Sheltering Wings, which is an organization that helps women and children involved in domestic violence. So I thought that it tied into my purpose with this blog quite nicely.

You can watch their video below:

So far this week they’ve raised over $7,000 and it’s only Wednesday. If you want to help out, you can find them here. If you sign up for their e-mails, you’ll be notified what the new shirt is every week. They are doing really great things. A few weeks ago, they raised over $20,000 for Autism Speaks.

Disclosure: Sevenly did not ask me to write this post, I did it because I wanted to. I am affiliated with Sevenly as an ambassador, but that is a volunteer program that I signed up for because I think Sevenly is a great company and I want to help get the word out.

The Women in Time’s Most Influential List 2011: Maria Bashir

Again, Maria Bashir is not a name I recognize immediately, but let’s take a look before I make a decision on whether I think she is influential or not.

• She is a prosecutor in Afghanistan, focuses especially on cases of violence against women.
• She couldn’t work under the Taliban so she took to schooling girls in her house. Illegally.
• She has been a hard voice of dissent to the Afghan government’s practices, especially those that restrict women.
• She has been honor with the International Women of Courage Award by the US government.
• She has faced assassination attempts.

From http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2066367_2066369_2066487,00.html

I definitely think she is influential for a bunch of reasons. First of all, she is giving other women in Afghanistan someone to look up to. Women in Afghanistan need many things to be empowered, but one part of the picture is having positive female role models, so that women and girls have something to aspire to. Maria is providing that. Second, she illegally taught girls during the rain of the Taliban. This makes her influential because these girls will go on to have better lives because they are educated. Those girls have been directly influenced. Third, she is helping to ensure that laws are enforced. This will directly help Afghanistan to become a better place for women and children. She has been highly influential in this area. And not that I would say this is a true way to measure influence, but she has faced multiple assassination attempts and has guards who protect her. Generally, only people who have enough power to change things face these kind of circumstances. If there weren’t people who thought she was making a difference in Afghanistan, then they wouldn’t try to kill her. So I think she is definitely influential. What are your thoughts? Do you think Maria Bashir is influential or do you disagree? Let me know your thoughts in the comments! 

Sources:

• Maria Bashir – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Abusive Afghan Husbands Want This Woman Dead – Mother Jones
• Maria Bashir: Afghanistan’s fearless female prosecutor – BBC

Band Members Quit After Lead Singer Hits 2 Women

Screeching Weasel. Yeah, it’s a band I’ve never heard of either. Apparently though, their lead singer hit not just one woman, but two women on stage. After that, apparently four of the band members quit right after this.

While I think there should have been more repercussions (because so far as I can tell, he was never charged with assault or anything like that), I think that these men taking a stand against his actions was important. Why? Because I think so often women are told how to avoid violent situations, how to not be a victim.

But men are an important part of the picture too that are often left out. I think they, more than anything, need to help change the culture – to make it so that it is not okay for a man to hit a woman. Because it’s one thing for a woman to say it’s not okay, it’s another for men to say to other men that it’s not okay. And that’s essentially what these four other musicians did. I applaud what they did and I wish there were more men willing to take a stand against violence against women. I’m sure they’re out there, but I wish they would take a more active role. Because if they did, I think it would go a long way towards ending violence against women.

Just my two cents. 50 percent of the world is men and 50 percent of the world is women roughly. Both the men and the women need to be part of the solution if we ever want to stop violence against women.