ABOUT V-DAY
V-Day is a global activist movement to end violence against all women (cisgender, transgender, and those who hold fluid identities that are subject to gender-based violence), girls and the Earth. V-Day believes that when art and activism come together, they have the power to transform systems and change culture. Founded by V (formerly Eve Ensler), activist and author of the The Vagina Monologues, V-Day has inspired women all over the world and raised collective consciousness about how violence and gender intersect. V-Day is a movement and an example of how the power of art can be used as a liberating tool for transformational holistic education and social justice.
“Probably the most important piece of political theater of the last decade.”
– The New York Times
The Vagina Monologues and other works curated by V-Day have been performed across the world by local activists, survivors and artists, raising over $120 million dollars for grassroots anti-violence groups, rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, and safe houses, shattering taboos and changing the way activists make change in their communities.
V-Day is one of the top-rated charities on Charity Navigator and Guidestar.
V-Day supports and launched the City of Joy, a revolutionary center for women survivors of gender violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has graduated over 1472 women leaders. V-World Farm, also in Congo, is a sustainable and collective farm that acts as living classroom for the students at the City of Joy and the surrounding community.
Activists look at the intersection of class, race, gender, environmental destruction, imperialism, militarism, patriarchy, poverty, and war, as women face abuse and exploitation across layers of systematic and societal oppression, with the most marginalized and excluded often facing increased levels of violence.
In 2013, V-Day gave birth to One Billion Rising – the largest mass action to demand an end to violence against women in history. V-Day and One Billion Rising are a crucial part of the global fight to stop gender-based violence through attacking the silence — public and private — that allows violence against women to continue.
With ingenuity and determination, V-Day activists around the world are tirelessly working to end harassment, rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation and sex slavery.
The ‘V’ in V-Day stands for Voices, Victory, Valentine, and Vagina.
Including Mother Earth in our mission is an intentional step. We hope it will inspire our activists and audience members to stop and reflect on the connection between violence against women and girls and violence against the Earth. The system of patriarchy that allows both to continue unfettered must be dismantled.
And that is why V-Day activists are tackling the issues of survivors destabilized by the climate crisis and at future risk, and why One Billion Rising activists are on the front lines, tackling the intersection of climate catastrophe and violence against women. In the same way, at the City of Joy, women survivors feel the urgency of climate change – severe weather threatens their very being, making them doubly vulnerable.
We will work to do the work of dismantling the systems that allow violence in all of its forms to fester. Day in and day out.
Until the violence stops. For all women, for all girls, for Mother Earth.
V-Day is one of the top-rated charities on Charity Navigator and Guidestar.
V-Day is an organized response against violence toward all women, girls and the Earth.
V-Day is a vision: We see a world where women live safely and freely.
V-Day is a demand: Rape, incest, battery, genital mutilation and sexual slavery must end now.
V-Day is a spirit: We believe women should spend their lives creating and thriving rather than surviving or recovering from terrible atrocities.
V-Day is a catalyst: By raising money and consciousness, it will unify and strengthen existing anti-violence efforts. Triggering far-reaching awareness, it will lay the groundwork for new educational, protective, and legislative endeavors throughout the world.
V-Day is a process: We will work as long as it takes. We will not stop until the violence stops.
V-Day is a day. We proclaim Valentine’s Day as V-Day, to celebrate women and end the violence.
V-Day is a fierce, wild, unstoppable movement and community.
Join us!
V-Day is one of the top-rated charities on Charity Navigator and Guidestar.