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Turning Pain to Power -- with Eve Ensler and Denis Mukwege

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Event Date

2/18/2009 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Please arrive early for registration

Location

Hotel Sofitel

Address

233 Twin Dolphin Drive
Redwood City, California 94065

Eve Ensler, Founder, V-Day

Eve Ensler is a playwright, performer and activist. She is the award-winning author of The Vagina Monologues, which has been published in 45 languages and performed in over 120 countries. She is the also the founder/artistic director of V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women.

Denis Mukwege, Founder, Panzi Hospital

Dr. Mukwege is the Director and Founder of the groundbreaking Panzi General Referral Hospital in Bukavu, South Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where he performs life-saving fistula surgeries on girls and women who have been brutally raped and mutilated in the Congolese war. Together with V-Day and UNICEF, he is working to build the City of Joy, a safe house project which will be a refuge for healed women, survivors of rape and torture who have been left without family and community. City of Joy will offer a safe haven, providing educational and income-generating opportunities, and support women in becoming the next leaders of the DRC. In 2008, has was named winner of the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights.

Eve Ensler

Founder, V-Day

Denis Mukwege

Founder, Panzi Hospital

Turning Pain to Power

Join Jane Wales, President & CEO of the World Affairs Council and Global Philanthropy Forum, for a powerful conversation with two dynamic agents of change: Denis Mukwege, founder of the Panzi Hospital in Eastern Congo and winner of the 2008 UN Human Rights Prize, and Eve Ensler, founder of V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls. Dr. Mukwege and Ms. Ensler will discuss Dr. Mukwege’s work with survivors of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a country rich in natural resources but weighed down by years of war and its attendant abuses.

Since 1996, sexual violence against women and girls in Eastern DRC has been used as a weapon of war to torture, humiliate and destroy not only women and girls, but entire families and communities. Hundreds of thousands of women and girls have been raped due to conflict in the region. The V-Day movement and UNICEF (in partnership with UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict) are engaged in a global campaign to bring much needed attention to the needs of Congolese women and girls. The campaign is called “Stop Raping Our Greatest Resource: Power to the Women and Girls of DRC.”

On the ground, women survivors are coming together and breaking the silence. Dr. Mukwege and Ms. Ensler will speak about violence against women, the efforts underway to end it, and their work toward supporting a new wave of women leaders in the region. Please join us as we learn what it takes to economically and socially empower women and girls so that they can become leaders in rebuilding their country.

Check-in 6:00 PM, Program 6:30 PM

We are no longer accepting reservations for this program. To attend, please arrive at the hotel at 6:00 PM to buy an admission ticket.

Responding to regional crises and humanitarian emergencies will be a major issue addressed at our 2009 Annual Conference Global Priorities: Critical Choices for the Obama Administration