Join the #OneBillionRising campaign to end violence against women

It’s not very British is it, asking people to get up and dance? And not just for a bop either, but as part of a mass protest movement organised for next Valentine’s Day. But the cause couldn’t be any more important – a call to end violence against women and girls. Violence that affects 70% of women around the world, according to the UN.

It is perhaps no surprise that it took an American and an unusually global one at that, to come up with this scheme. Eve Ensler, a writer and activist who founded a movement with a play about the vagina and launched V-Day, an international day of action to end violence against women, is aiming big. She wants to mark the day’s 15th anniversary in 2013 with a far larger project to get a billion of us to leave our homes, our workplaces, whatever we are doing, and dance. Women aged 15-44 are more at risk from rape and domestic violence than from cancer, car accidents, war and malaria, according to the World Bank.

It sounds crazy doesn’t it, but watch this video on the onebillionrising.org launching today to see how empowering the idea can be. As well as unions and charities and campaigners, we have filmed celebrities such as Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, Rosario Dawson and Ruby Wax as well as inspirational role models including boxer Nicola Adams, politician Stella Creasy and powerbroker Fatou Bensada to speak out against such injustice.

[More here: guardian]