Monterey Institute of International Studies will again be one of many universities worldwide hosting a performance of “V-Day: A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant, A Prayer.” I encourage you to contemplate the realities of violence against women and girls and speak out against it with your poetry, your story, your heart. If you are on-campus and can commit to some rehearsals and the performance on April 4, 2009, please get involved!

“V-Day is a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. V-Day is a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money and revitalize the pirit of existing anti-violence organizations. V-Day generates broader attention for the fight to stop violence against women and girls, including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation and sexual slavery.

Through V-Day campaigns, local volunteers and college students produce annual benefit performances of The Vagine Monologues, A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and a Prayer, and screenings of V-Day’s documentary Until The Violence Stops to raise awareness and funds for anti-violence gruops within their own communities. 2009 V-Day events have the option to introduce a new V-Day theatrical event, Any One of Us: Words From Prison, which reveals the connection between women in prison and the violence that often brings them there. This new event will bring forth raw voices of fierceness and honesty written by women from prisons across the nation and performed by local women.”

At this year’s V-Day event, we will stage monologues from Eve Ensler’s “A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant, and A Prayer”, Writings to Stop Violence Against Women and Children on April 4, 2009. Proceeds of the event will benefit a local women’s rights group.