The Two Boots Mardi Gras Benefit Ball, hosted by L.E.S. homegirl Rosario Dawson, is the party of the year – with incredible costumes, bands from New Orleans and NYC, the crowning of a celeb Queen and King, live art, DJs and great food and drink. The Girls Club is building our new building on Avenue D and needs your support more than ever!

Purchase your tickets now ($20 or $100) and get ready to let the good times roll!

100% of all proceeds go directly to The Lower Eastside Girls Club!

Third Annual Two Boots Mardi Gras Benefit Ball
Featuring Los Po-Boy-Citos, direct from New Orleans!
Hosted by Rosario Dawson
Tuesday, February 21st 2012
7pm to 12am
Le Poisson Rouge (158 Bleecker Street New York, NY)

Tickets:
$20 in advance, $25 day of event
$100 VIP ticket (includes food, 3 hour open bar & reserved seating)

Why Your Vote Counts More Than Ever

by Rosario Dawson 

We all need to become involved. We can’t sit on our hands waiting for the change we want to see. Sí se puede, but only if we demand it.

The election may be several months away, but this is not the year to stay home. There are few issues I care about more than promoting the vote, particularly among young American Latinos. I firmly believe that the quality of our future as the second largest population relies on our ability to mobilize today. This is what in 2004 compelled me to found Voto Latino, the country’s leading organization in registering and engaging young Latino voters.

WATCH: Voto Latino’s United We Win PSA

I’m excited about rallying people to the polls next year. But the current political mood worries me. I know that for some of us it may be tempting to stay home on Nov. 6, 2012. Maybe you’re unemployed or uninsured. Maybe you lost your home to foreclosure or are drowning in student loans. Maybe you voted for the first time in 2008, but now think that it doesn’t matter who wins because things don’t change.

You might think it’s sending a strong message to withhold your vote. But staying home will only accomplish one thing: It will make you irrelevant. There’s no doubt that there are many issues out there that need to be fixed—and badly. Unemployment among Latinos is higher than the national average. More than 25 percent of our people live in poverty. People continue to be deported at record numbers. But that’s why Latinos need to get more involved, not less.

Rosario Dawson Encourages Young Latinos to Vote

At times like these, we need to remember that elected officials respond to two things: money and votes. Now, most of us don’t have wads of cash to throw around, but we all have the power of the vote. The trip to your nearest precinct is only the beginning of your role in making our government responsive and effective.

Just like you wouldn’t tell your child to clean his or her room and expect it to be done without nagging, getting our elected officials to address our needs requires vigilance and accountability. And there’s an abundance of recent examples that show that when people act, change happens. Look at Arizona. Just one year ago, it looked lost to divisiveness and hate. But S.B. 1070 seems to have awakened Arizonans, and last November they booted Russell Pearce, the man who spearheaded passage of the controversial and strict immigration law, out of office.

WATCH: MSNBC Beyond Borderlines Town Hall on Immigration

We also need to remember that the election later this year will do more than decide who is going to live in the White House. Ballots will also include races for every level of government from school boards and city councils to state and federal representation. Funding for our children’s schools, state and local tax rates and other local laws that affect every one of us are often decided by the few people who do show up to vote.

It might seem early to start talking about an election that’s 10 months away, but now is the time to register to vote, and get your friends and family registered. And if you have moved since the last election, make sure to update your voter registration. At Voto Latino, our calendar for next year is full of events that celebrate our vote, that remind us that our power begins at the polls and gives our young leaders the tools they need to create positive change in their communities. We recently had an event in Texas where we registered about 5,000 high school seniors. Hearing stories about the students connecting issues that affect their lives to steps they can take to regain control over their future was empowering and reaffirming.

We all need to become involved. We can’t sit on our hands waiting for the change we want to see. Sí se puede, but only if we demand it.

Originally published on Latina.com

Want to spend some one on one time with Rosario Dawson this holiday? Bid for a chance to meet Rosario and have her read A Christmas Story to you! Click here to find out more information!

Please note that the location of this meeting will be in NYC based on Rosario’s schedule.

The proceeds for this item benefit Shine On Sierra Leone

OSLO, NORWAY, November 25, 2011 – Nobel Peace Prize Concert organizers announced today that Rosario Dawson will join Helen Mirren to host the 18th annual Nobel Peace Prize Concert on Sunday, December 11th in Oslo, Norway.

The Concert will feature previously announced artists including Sugarland, David Gray, Jill Scott, Janelle Monáe, Matthew Morrison, Ellie Goulding, Evanescence, Bernhoft, World Youth Choir and the Nobel laureates’ personal selections of Miatta Fahnbulleh, Angelique Kidjo and Ahmed Fathi.

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize Concert will honor laureates Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman, for what the Norwegian Nobel Committee calls “their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”

The award is given annually for work exemplifying a spirit of hope and leadership that will help promote peace in the world. The Concert is presented by the Nobel Peace Prize Concert AS and broadcast to a global audience.

“Helen and Rosario will be wonderful hosts and ambassadors of peace,” said Geir Lundestad, Secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. “We welcome these talented artists from around the world and look forward to a memorable evening that honours and celebrates these remarkable laureates.”

The Nobel Peace Prize is the most prestigious award in the world, honoring icons such as Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Barack Obama, Kofi Annan, Al Gore and other remarkable individuals and organizations. For the past seventeen years, the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony has been followed the next day by the Nobel Peace Prize Concert, a musical celebration honoring the laureate.

Check out the add in this month’s issue of Glamour magazine with Rosario Dawson in her Ford Cares T-shirt. Ford and your Ford dealer are recruiting Warriors to help ramp up the fight against breast cancer. Ford Warriors in Pink can be found at the Komen Race for the Cure® events as always, only now they will arrive as a united front, as one in Warrior gear. Learn about the special meaning behind the Warriors in Pink symbols or read the published articles about these strong individuals all across America here. Be sure to check out the contest to win Warriors in Pink gear or a 2012 Ford Focus.

Rosario Dawson Acts Up
July/August 2011 Issue (read original article here)

Rosario Dawson never pined to be an actress. Her family, squatting in an abandoned tenement building in New York City, was just trying to make it. Then, when she was 15, the director of Kids spotted her on her front stoop, and her life has been a cascade of film roles, from Rent to Sin City, ever since. (You can see her in Zookeeper, a new comedy in theaters this week.) But the sexy starlet hasn’t forgotten her hardscrabble roots. Dawson, now 32, remains outspoken on everything from violence against women to the politics of the census. Naturally, the self-described “Twitterholic” was “best-dressed” at the White House correspondents’ dinner (so says that noted fashion arbiter Politico).

I caught up with Dawson as she was getting ready for a show by her friend Prince—and a visit with President Obama. She had so much to say about her various projects that we didn’t even get to her Star Trek yen (yes, she speaks Klingon) or the Paul Rudd crotch-grabbing incident last year when she defended a fondled Eva Mendes (and women everywhere). Suffice it to say, the lady’s got range.

Mother Jones: You’re in Girl Walks Into a Bar, the first straight-to-YouTube feature film. Is this where the industry is headed?

Rosario Dawson: Oh, hell yeah! With the recession, people are having to choose between their cable and their internet connection. And think about it. When they started making made-for-TV movies, people thought it was a fluke. Who would watch that? Because it’s in your TV screen and not in a theater. Remember that?

MJ: How is digital distribution changing the game for you as an actor?

RD: It’s a whole other way of communicating with your fans and giving them content at their leisure. It’s like, there are people making music in their igloos on their PDAs. You’re going to see the exact same thing with film. I’ve been in this industry for 16 years, and I feel very excited about it again. Back in the day, you’d walk down to a street corner and see some people making a story with a hat in front of them. It’s ancient entertainment, ancient storytelling and oral history—now we’re doing it on YouTube. We were all freaked out by the whole HD thing, that it would show every pore on a person’s face. Personally when I first saw it I said, wow, everything looks like porn! This is too real! But you get so desensitized, you just get used to it.

MJ: You were actually doing online productions before it was the current rage, producing and starring in online-only shows. Can you have more fun in this milieu since there are lower production costs, like can you experiment more?

RD: There wasn’t a whole lot of precedence before us. Maybe it wasn’t going to be a success, and they were going to spend this money and we weren’t going to be able to recoup it. We just put ourselves out there and it was fun, we were shooting in LA, with unions, and it just was great to just feel like, okay, we’re trying something else so let’s see what happens. You’re not spending an entire three days shooting half a page where everyone is sitting in their trailers for most of the time. I’ve just been very excited that over the years I’ve constantly had those types of different experiences. I like staying a little bit like acting school, not experimental, necessarily, but just fun. I have the best job in the world: I pretend for a living. You can’t get too precious about that.

MJ: You started Voto Latino in 2004 in the throes of the Bush Administration, where channeling outrage was pretty straightforward. Is the sell more complicated now?

RD: Yeah, but I think nuance is very important to have in the conversation, nuance that’s been lacking for a long time. A lot of voting organizations only exist every four years, putting all this money into “your voice is important!” Wouldn’t that be nice, if that’s all it took? Voting is the first political action for most people. But if you don’t follow up then voting is not actual participation but just a one-off. That person has no accountability or political cost to what they said they were going to do and what they ended up doing. This is the only free country in the world that’s doing lobbying. Voters should be the lobbyists. If we can spend all of this time with all these different celebrities who fill up the internet and magazines then we should be able to keep an eye on politicians because they might cost you your job and your home and your life savings. Don’t you want to know who they are? When people start to complain, “Voting doesn’t matter,” I’m like, the people of Wisconsin weren’t boycotting and hitting the streets and blowing up those rooms because voting didn’t change those situations for them. That was their livelihood. There’s revolution going on all over the world because they actually can’t have a voice.

MJ: You produced a series of telenovela spoofs for YouTube called La Pasion de la Decision that are essentially voting soap operas. Activism used to be so earnest. Has it lightened up a bit?

RD: The reason we do activism is because, maybe you haven’t been raped or abused, but there are millions of people who can’t say the same, and when you hear their stories you may be a little bit compelled. And it doesn’t have to be dark. In the Congo, there are women who’ve been raped and re-raped, and they’re so powerful, and they can carry trees on their heads, and they’re dancing!

MJ: What is it about Twitter that makes it a good mix for you as an actor and activist?

RD: I really like Twitter. It’s a conversation and it reminds me of having stranger conversations on the train. I’m a New Yorker. I’m used to bumping into strangers, acknowledging them, them acknowledging me, even if it’s just with an eyebrow lift. And maybe you just have those impromptu conversations, or where all of the sudden you’re standing on the corner waiting to cross the street and you notice three people looking up and you look up with them. And you all smile at each other because you’re seeing a little piece of a rainbow between two buildings, and that little [rainbow] and you all just shared a New York moment, and that’s awesome, and then you keep on in your way. (What’s odd about it is that I see it as these moments and then other people, I’ll reply to someone, and they’re like, “Follow me back, let’s be friends!” and I’m like, “See, on the train you have a great conversation between stops and you don’t necessarily exchange phone numbers. It’s not that deep, actually. Why can’t the moment just be what it is?”) I grew up and I’ve worked with people who have been very present, a) either always jumping to whatever is most modern technologically advanced sort of thing, or b) people in this industry, like Kevin Smith, who, his communication with his fans is hugely connected to his success. And he was talking about that years ago. And David Bowie was doing that years ago. And Prince was doing that years ago. There have been people who’ve understood it for a long time, who’ve gone, okay, this is a medium I get. It’s not a phase; it’s not a fad; it’s actually something quite vital and important, and it’s pretty fascinating to watch that.

For me it’s great because I am very political about stuff, and I do have a lot of issues that I care about. Twitter frees me up from being on the red carpet and feeling like I have all of these things to say, but it’s not the appropriate time to be talking about rape in the Congo. I’m in high heels, I’m wearing a fabulous dress, people want me to just smile and talk about my movie because I only have three minutes, and that’s my job. I do have people who are like, “Yo, I think someone hacked into your Twitter account to talk about census forms.” I’m like, “No, that’s me.” There are people who don’t like celebrities who tweet about politics—to whom I say, don’t follow me. Thank you for liking Sin City. I can completely understand if you watch that movie and then I talk about single-use plastic bags and you’re a little confused, maybe put off: “You should be talking about machine guns! In a sexy way!” I’m sorry, that’s not me.

MJ: Any hashtag you wish would take the Twitterverse by storm?

RD: I am the queen of hashtags! I love hashtags. I think in hashtags. I wish I could write everything in hashtag. Me and my friends, we do this little two-finger-on-two-finger thing when we talk to each other, because we’re Twitterholics. Maybe #acceptance. I feel like we pay a lot of attention to the word “tolerance,” and I don’t really like it. I get it, but I don’t need you to tolerate this. It is. When you accept something, it’s much deeper.

MJ: Why do you suppose that actors work so hard to remain apolitical?

RD: From Marilyn Monroe and beyond, that’s a huge part of Hollywood, creating a persona that’s mysterious and fairly simple, though it’s interesting how that’s changing: Now, you have fans who are like, “Um, yeah, I just emailed with Barack Obama and tweeted with Lady Gaga, so I’m kinda right there with you; give it to me.” I get that people are a little allergic to celebrities using their voices, but I grew up a squatter on the Lower East Side, so it’s kind of a given that I’d have very strong opinions on everything from cyclical violence to teenage pregnancy to environmental justice.

MJ: You don’t see mainstream films being made about poor people very often. Winter’s Bone, about life in the Missouri Ozarks, was made because it was backed by someone who was independently wealthy. It seems like the types of movies that are made could change if budgets are smaller, you can communicate wholly different messages to a worldwide audience.

RD: People watch more documentaries too now. These movies that would normally be shown in these little art houses, and unless you walked by the theater, or happened to read that tiny zine that contained the info for it, or went to a film festival, you might miss it. But now your average Joe can go: “I watched all the action movies on my playlist, now let me see what’s playing in documentaries, see if there’s anything I like there. I’ll watch this one on sports, and I’ll watch this other one, and then, all right, let me see this one on the private-prison system and the privatization of water and…holy shit!” It’s kind of amazing and in some ways it’s shocking to me how much information is out there and still how little we look at it to inform. Once upon a time if we saw whale murders were happening, people were hitting the streets and we had to stop them. And now The Cove wins awards, and no one’s doing anything about the dolphins. And then you see Inside Job, and you’re like, “Why aren’t people hitting the streets over this, what does it take?” You can watch a documentary at three o’clock in the afternoon and get really, really angry, and then just when you’re about to get up to call your congressman, a commercial comes on and you’re like, “Oh my God, I love that laughing baby, it’s so cute!” Wait a minute, no, this was a big thing you just saw, why don’t you get active about it? I don’t put all my eggs in any basket and go, now with social media we can just be social activists; no, we have to really choose to do take action. And it’s a long day, and you want to just play your video game. And believe me, I love playing Red Dead Redemption or Arkham Asylum, too. I get it; it’s not about always being so vigilant all the time. It’s about finding that balance.

MJ: When you were just 19, Prince invited you to do the intro commentary on his “1999” remix. He also called you the “voice of a generation.” You seem to have taken that to heart.

RD: He just saw me. Maybe more so than I saw myself at that time. I take it very seriously. And it’s not all like beautiful-smelling roses all the time. There’s room for improvement. And I’m young enough. My grandmother will vote, but she looks at some of the political stuff I do and says, “That’s a young person’s game.” But then there’s Dolores Huerta—she’s what, 80? And she’s saying, “I’m not tired, I’m still marching—what’s your excuse?”

Largest Gathering of Volunteer and Service Leaders Convenes in New Orleans, June 6-8

NEW ORLEANS, June 1, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — As communities across the country face challenges ranging from the dropout crisis to childhood hunger to natural disasters, and as Americans look for ways to give back, volunteer service has become an essential strategy for solving community challenges. Leaders from the service sector will come together to share solutions, best practices and lessons for achieving greater impact at the 2011 National Conference on Volunteering and Service (NCVS) in New Orleans, June 6-8.

The conference, convened by Points of Light Institute and the Corporation for National and Community Service, is the world’s largest gathering of volunteer and service leaders from the nonprofit, corporate and government sectors. This year’s event will provide nearly 4,000 “Champions of Service” with an opportunity to learn, connect and be inspired through a range of plenary sessions, workshops, special events, service projects and more.

The closing session on Wednesday, June 8, features the presentation of a Presidential Volunteer Service award to actor and activist Rosario Dawson, performances by Grammy Award-winner Chris Thomas King and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Percy Sledge and the announcement of the 2012 NCVS host city, all hosted by comedian John Oliver from “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

For more information on NCVS, please visit www.VolunteeringandService.org

Voices 7 will be held at ESPACE, 635 West 42nd Street (between 11th/12th Avenues). This special evening features a cocktail reception, a silent auction, and performances by our members including Lyrical Circle—an award winning collective of poets. This event is a unique opportunity for our dynamic supporters to celebrate BHSS’s work helping Black and Latino youth develop into critical thinkers and community leaders.

Voices is our signature annual celebration of our youth and our life changing programming. The evening provides a platform for our members to share their unique commentary through spoken word performances. Voices is also the time when we celebrate and highlight the accomplishments of our honorees – individuals who embody the ideals of The Brotherhood/Sister Sol: Positivity, Community, Knowledge and Future.
Our honorees…
Dr. Cornel West – The Bayard Rustin Award for Social Justice
Rosario Dawson – The Frida Kahlo Award for innovative Creativity
Hon. David N. Dinkins – The Ella Baker & César Chávez Award for Positive Community Development

Our host…
Soledad O’Brien – CNN

Thursday, May 5th, 2011

ESPACE
635 West 42nd Street
Time: 6:30pm

The Brotherhood/Sister Sol
512 West 143rd Street
New York, NY 10031
www.brotherhood-sistersol.org

Please Contact Ariana Aguilar for any questions regarding Voices 7
Phone: 212.283.7044
E-mail: fundraising@brotherhood-sistersol.org

Buy your tickets here

Voto Latino will kick off the White House Correspondents’ Dinner weekend with our 2nd annual On Series event in Washington, D.C.

On April 28, 2011, the ON: Emerging Voices in Media forum will bring together journalists, policymakers, leaders, and artists to share their insights and discuss opportunities to break barriers in media. The ON forums convene thought leaders to tackle the most pressing issues that impact American Latinos today. Voto Latino believes that by coming together, we can innovate creative solutions to these issues.

Invited speakers include:

* Lee Brenner, HyperVocal Co-Founder, Former MySpace Political Director
* Rosario Dawson, Voto-Latino Co-Founder, Actor
* Mignon Clyburn, FCC Commissioner
* Janet Murgia, President & CEO, NCLR
* Antoine, Sanfuentes, NBC News Washington Bureau Chief
* Cenk Uygur, Young Turks & MSNBC Host

—————

Founded in 2004 by actress Rosario Dawson and political analyst Maria Teresa Kumar, Voto Latino is the leading non-partisan Latino youth civic engagement organization.

United by the belief that Latino issues are American issues and American issues are Latino issues, Voto Latino leverages youth, media, celebrity voices and the latest technology to shake up the political process.

Fighting Congo’s Ills With Education and an Army of Women
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

BUKAVU, Democratic Republic of Congo — Eve Ensler has an audacious plan.

For years, diplomats, aid workers, academics and government officials here have been vexed almost to the point of paralysis about how to attack this country’s staggering problem of sexual violence, in which hundreds of thousands of women have been raped, many quite sadistically, by the various armed groups who haunt the hills of eastern Congo.

Sending in more troops has compounded the problem. United Nations peacekeepers have failed to stop it. Would reforming the Congolese military work? Building up the Congolese state? Pushing harder to regulate so-called conflict minerals to starve the rebels of an income?

For Ms. Ensler, the feminist playwright who wrote “The Vagina Monologues” and who has worked closely with Congolese women, the answer was simple.

“You build an army of women,” she said. “And when you have enough women in power, they take over the government and they make different decisions. You’ll see. They’ll say ‘Uh-uh, we’re not taking this any longer,’ and they’ll put an end to this rape problem fast.”

Over the weekend, Ms. Ensler took the first step toward building this army: the opening of a base here in Bukavu called City of Joy.

The gleaming new compound of brick homes, big classrooms, courtyards and verandas will be a campus where small groups of Congolese women, most of them rape victims, will be groomed to become leaders in their communities so they can eventually rise up and, Ms. Ensler hopes, change the sclerotic politics of this country. They will take courses in self-defense, computers and human rights; learn trades and farming; try to exorcise their traumas with therapy sessions and dance; and then return to their home villages to empower others.

The center, built partly by the hands of the women themselves, cost around $1 million. Unicef contributed a substantial amount, and the rest was raised from foundations and private donors by Ms. Ensler’s advocacy group, V-Day. Google is donating a computer center.

It is a gutsy concept, to invest this heavily in a small group of mostly illiterate women — about 180 leadership recruits per year — in the hope that they will catalyze social change.

But Ms. Ensler has faced long odds before, encouraging rape victims in Afghanistan, Bosnia and other war zones to speak out and become leaders.

“This could be a turning point,” said Stephen Lewis, a former Unicef official whose private foundation is helping City of Joy. “There’s been growing international concern about what’s happening in Congo, but up until now that hasn’t amounted to anything on the ground. Maybe this is the moment where women on the ground show they can turn this around.”

Eastern Congo is one of the poorest and most dysfunctional places on earth, but it is also one of the most beautiful, a land of sculptured green mountains and deep, clear lakes and trees upon trees. It is teeming with riches: gold, diamonds, timber, copper, tin and more. And though the people here, especially the women, have been brutally abused for years — many have had assault rifles thrust inside them, others raped with chunks of wood and left incontinent and sterile for life — their spirits have hardly been crushed.

When City of Joy officially opened Friday, hundreds of women, most of them rape victims, thumped on drums and sang at the top of their lungs. They wore black T-shirts that read, “Stop the rape of our most precious resource.” It seemed that the army of women Ms. Ensler envisioned was mustering in front of her eyes. Some even danced with the shovels and cement-encrusted trowels that they used to build the City of Joy.

It was an upbeat moment in a country that has had few. The legacy of brutality and exploitation goes back to the 1880s, when King Leopold II of Belgium claimed Congo as a colony and essentially enslaved the population to obtain piles of ivory and rubber.

In the mid-1990s, the country sank to new depths when a civil war broke out and neighboring nations jumped in, arming this or that rebel group in order to get their hands on this or that gold or diamond mine. Millions died. Although the other African armies eventually withdrew, many of the rebel groups never disbanded, exploiting the fact that Congo is incredibly large and the state incredibly weak.

These armed groups have to a striking degree vented their rage against women. Sadistic rape — sometimes of men and boys as well — has become a distinctive feature of the violence here, sometimes to terrorize civilians, sometimes for no apparent strategic purpose.

Draw a line in almost any direction from Bukavu and you will hit a village where countless women have been brutalized.

Just last month, in the nearby town of Fizi, dozens of women were raped by Congolese Army soldiers. Congolese authorities took the unusual step of arresting some of the officers involved, including a colonel, but few really believe that will make a difference. The United Nations has an enormous peacekeeping operation in Congo, but even villages near the peacekeepers’ bases have been hit.

The government, which has done little to address the problem, sent a high-level delegation to the opening of City of Joy. As the dignitaries arrived, hundreds of children lined the road, their toes squishing in the mud. Police officers patrolled with rusty rifles and ill-fitting helmets sitting crookedly on their heads. Pakistani peacekeepers stood in their jeeps, fingers on the trigger.

Ms. Ensler came up with the idea for the center about three years ago after hearing from Congolese women that they wanted a safe place where they could learn skills. While some of the center’s alumnae will return to their villages, others will carry out the mission in other ways.

“I don’t want to go back to my village and get raped again,” said Jane Mukoninwa, who had been gang-raped twice and will be in the first class of leadership recruits. “I want to learn to read and write so I can stay in Bukavu.”

She added: “I’m angry. And if I can get some skills, I can be an advocate.”

On Saturday, the women gave Ms. Ensler a spirited send-off. They surprised her with a gift they bought, a wooden carving of a mother and child, and pressed around her, dancing.

They sang: “Why did you accept to carry us? We will never leave you to the end.”

Ms. Ensler wiped the tears from her eyes.

Source: New York Times

The Off-Camera Revolutions
While all eyes turn to Egypt, women lead quiet revolutions around the world.
COURTNEY E. MARTIN

It’s a moment for revolutions. Some are loud and measured in the millions. Some are tearing down dying regimes. Some are quieter, characterized by the slow but steady building of a new paradigm. A Congolese woman in an orange Day-Glo vest perches on a ladder and adds a brick to the growing wall — that’s a picture, one you haven’t seen, of a less publicized revolution.

V-Day, playwright Eve Ensler’s global movement to end violence against women and girls, has created a new model in development: the City of Joy. Last Friday, the city — located in Bukavu, a provincial capital in the Democratic Republic of Congo — officially opened its doors as a place where Congolese survivors of sexual violence can heal from the past and look to the future — personally and politically. Thanks to V-Day, UNICEF, and their local partners, every year,180 women will have the opportunity to receive therapy and training in technology and media skills, allowing them to come to grips with their stories and then tell them to the world. It is a place where a new kind of humanitarian aid and economic and political development is being invented. The dream is big; the potential impact is vast.

Though it may be the most organized and resourced, the City of Joy is not the first recent example of women triumphing in the darkest of times. Media broadcasts, newspapers, and tweets have focused the world’s attention on revolutions like that taking place in Egypt, but less sensational shifts are also occurring all the time. Women are rising from the ashes of their destroyed homelands.

As depicted so artfully in the documentary film Pray the Devil Back to Hell, thousands of Liberian women stood up to warlords and guerilla fighters in 2003 and then ushered in a new era with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in power.

In a Somalia still recovering from civil war that has raged since the 1990s, Dr. Hawa Abdi and her two daughters, Deco and Amina, created their own haven for refugees. They built a hospital on what used to be their 200-acre family farm. They not only treat the 90,000 people who live there but also provide education and economic-empowerment opportunities. Dr. Abdi, 63, even turned a storage shed into a makeshift jail to detain abusive husbands. Abdi was held hostage for a week last May by al-Qaeda-linked militants who were, according to CBS News, “furious that a woman had become a leader to so many.” She reportedly told them, “If you want to kill me kill me, no problem; someday I have to die.” She was set free.

Across the world, in the devastated country of Haiti, a similar effort is rising through different means. The only women’s right group in the city of Jacmel, Haiti — Fanm Deside (Women Decide) — has decided to tackle an increase in sexual assaults against girls and women by creating civilian nighttime patrols. Fanm Deside hasn’t yet leveraged its violence-prevention work into political clout, per se, but the group is making alliances with domestic and international powers.

The women in all of these countries are demonstrating great political opportunity in profound national instability. If there is anything “positive” about enduring state and interpersonal violence, it is that it often pushes women to finally use their own voices — loudly, clearly, and in service of pursuing peace.

This isn’t just an empowering side effect for women but a protective measure for all citizens. As a recent study in North and South Kivu provinces and the Ituri district in Congo demonstrates, 40 percent of adult women self-report enduring sexual violence, but an astonishing 24 percent of adult men do, too. Everyone is better protected when political power is more equally distributed and violence is halted. A diversity of perspectives and an array of accountability from the grassroots to government levels is an inoculation, of sorts, against corruption and violence.

The City of Joy will become another demonstration — one with the unparalleled publicity and financial resources of V-Day behind it — that humanitarian aid should not stop with food and water and a sense of basic safety. People in war-torn countries need more than that. They need loving community, inspiring environments, tools for expressing themselves — and that is a goal these women are helping to achieve.

Turning our attention to Egypt right now is key. The spirited destruction of old and corrupt institutions is certainly captivating. But the quiet building up of new institutions, brick by brick, can be just as inspiring if we look and listen closely enough.

Source: Prospect.org