Women's Views on News |
- Magic on a Monday
- Make the Merseyside Model law
- Events 3 – 9 March
- Samba band record attempt for footballers
| Posted: 03 Mar 2014 08:30 AM PST
By Sue Marsh. Who says magic can’t happen on a Monday morning? From now until the election we have to do just one thing. We must persuade the public that they’re wrong about welfare. Just that one thing. If we don’t, whoever wins the election will not see a need to address the great social crisis unfolding. So from now on, every Monday, if everyone that reads this blog persuades just one other person that they’ve been misled, that “reform” is simply another word for hate, we will have converted nearly 200,000 people. It doesn’t matter who it is – a nurse or doctor, a teacher or school-gate Mum. Maybe the electrician or the postman. You might email an old friend and tell them about the fears you have for the futures of sick and disabled people in the UK. Best of all, write letters to your local paper. Every Monday, a quick email to the letters editor pointing out the new PIP 20 mtr rule or the chaos of Universal Credit or the total mess of ESA and you could have a big impact. One week at a time, one person at a time, it might not seem like much but it could make a big difference. If you plead with the people you convince to convince others, that 200,000 might become a million and those million night become 2. Here’s my offering for this week’s “MagicMonday” action… “Dear Sir, I wanted to let your readers know about Mark Wood. Mark was 44 and suffered from severe mental health problems. Amongst other things, he was diagnosed with aspbergers and OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) Last year, Atos Healthcare, the French IT company who carry out Employment & Support Allowance (previously incapacity or “sickness” benefit) judged that Mark was fit to work. They didn’t consult his GP who has since said that if he had been consulted he would never have recommended that Mark could work. His ESA was stopped along with his housing benefit, leaving him just £40 per week to cover all his expenses. Food, shelter, warmth. Mark died of starvation just 4 months later. When they found him, there was just a banana and a tin of tuna in his home. It is the UK and the year is 2014. Yet people are starving to death, alone in their homes. They do it discreetly, out of sight, but they die just the same. If Mark was an isolated case, then maybe, just maybe, we could forgive his tragic loss. Maybe the pain his family feel would have been less crushing. But he’s very far from an isolated case. Stephanie Bottril, Karen Sherlock, Mark and Helen Mullins, Denis Jones, Jacqueline Harris, David Barr, Elaine Lowe, Elenor Tatton, Linda Wootton… The list goes on and on now. Every day a different death linked directly to government social security “reforms” yet we, the public, seem determined to look away. I never thought I’d see the day when I had to warn people, right here in the UK, that often vulnerable sick or disabled people are dying and no-one cares. In 2011/12, 10,600 people died within just 3 months of being found “fit for work” by the DWP. Since then, they’ve refused to publish further statistics at all. When this government speaks of “welfare reforms”, I’m fairly sure readers don’t assume that they will cause tens of thousands of deaths. I just hope we all wake up soon, before they are joined by thousands more Very best Sue Marsh” As we’ve always reassured one another, alone we whisper, but together we shout. A version of this post first appeared on Sue Marsh's blog 'Diary of a Benefit Scrounger'. Sue has a rare form of Crohn's Disease: she has had many operations to remove strictures (narrowings in my bowel that grow like tumours), suffers daily pain, often vomiting, malnourished and weak; takes mega-strong medications every day including chemo-style immuno-suppressants, opiates and anti-sickness injections.  |
| Posted: 03 Mar 2014 07:32 AM PST
In 2006, the Merseyside Police declared crimes against street sex workers hate crimes. To date, they are the only police force in the UK to treat crimes against street sex workers in this way. Liverpool had the highest sex worker murder rate in the UK after London and Glasgow, and police decided that something radical had to be done to reverse the trend. According to the Home Office research report, ‘Tackling the demand for prostitution: a rapid evidence assessment of the published research literature’, published in 2004, women in prostitution suffer higher rates of murder, rape and physical violence than other groups in the UK’s population. And the mortality rate for women in prostitution in the UK is twelve times higher than the national average for those in London. More than half have been raped or seriously sexually assaulted and at least three quarters have been physically assaulted. With figures this high, it is difficult to understand why London’s Metropolitan Police (the Met) haven’t thought more seriously about adopting the Merseyside model of policing prostitution. In Merseyside, people in prostitution are treated like victims when a crime is committed against them. They are not treated like criminals and as a result, perpetrators are being convicted. Treating crimes against sex workers as hate crimes has enabled Merseyside Police to achieve an 85 per cent conviction rate for crimes of sexual assault and a 67 per cent conviction rate for rape. The national average rate of conviction for rape stands at 6.5 per cent, so their ‘model’ is definitely having an impact. Mariana Popa was killed recently while working as a street sex worker in London. Her death made clear the significant differences in the opinion of senior police officers of different forces in how best to deal with crimes of this nature. At the time of Popa’s murder, the Met were running an enforcement campaign against sex workers and to avoid detection – and arrest – by patrolling officers, the women were forced to work on their own. Her fellow street sex workers believe that if the Metropolitan Police had adopted the Merseyside Model of policing crimes against sex workers, Mariana Popa would not have been forced off the streets to work in isolation; her murder could have been prevented. Writer Ruth Jacobs, a former sex worker and victim of rape, believes that all police forces should be adopting the Merseyside Model of policing to protect sex workers from crimes of sexual assault and rape. In an interview with the F-Word, she said: ‘Most sex workers find it difficult to report rape or violence because of the stigma associated with prostitution.’ Treating crimes against sex workers as hate crimes would help to remove this stigma and enable those who are victims to have the courage to come forward. It would give them strength and the belief that they would be listened to. In 2007, Bonnie Barratt, a 24 year-old street sex worker working in the Whitechapel area of East London, was murdered by Derek Brown. She was his second victim in Jack the Ripper-style killings. She had become a drug addict and had been arrested 37 times for prostitution. She was convicted four times for loitering for the purposes of prostitution. When sentencing Brown to a minimum of 30 years in jail Judge Martin Stephens told him both the women he had murdered “were vulnerable, plying their trade on the streets, in each case falling into your hands precisely because of their availability and their lack of protection.” Bonnie Barratt’s mother, Jackie Summerford, strongly believes better policing could have prevented her daughter’s death. Speaking to the Independent, she said: ‘About four months before Bonnie was murdered, another prostitute visited Brown in his flat. This sex worker thought he was acting "very oddly" and left as fast as she could. But she did not warn the police of her fears about him.’ Both Ruth Jacobs and Jackie Summerford believe the Merseyside Model of policing affords superior protection to street sex workers and supports them in approaching the police about concerns and actual assaults. The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) now recommends that this Merseyside Model of policing is adopted by police forces nationwide as best practice. This has not yet occurred, and Jackie Summerford, Ruth Jacobs and Alex Bryce are behind a campaign asking the Home Secretary, Teresa May, to make the Merseyside Model of policing law for crimes against sex workers. To date, nearly 64,000 people have shown their support and signed the petition asking for a law to protect women like Bonnie. By prioritising the protection of sex workers who are victims of crimes instead of enforcing soliciting laws, a level of trust is built between the victim and the police force. Adopting the model nationwide would mean working in this way would provide a recognition of the risks faced by street sex workers; some men target these women precisely because they believe that they are unprotected.  |
| Posted: 03 Mar 2014 04:15 AM PST
Belfast: 3 – 7 March: Ulster Hall Lecture and Workshop Series. A series of lunch time events at 1pm, fronted by academics and well-known women's sector figures, organised by Reclaim the Agenda. Bring your lunch box along. 3 March: Mary Anne-McCracken: Pioneer feminist and revolutionary. Lecture by Dr John Gray. Email or call 028 9023 0212 for further details. 4 March: Shrieking Sisters, in The Linen Hall Library at 2pm. To mark International Women's Day 2014, The Linen Hall Library is staging an interactive schools performance Of Shrieking Sisters, a play based on the real-life attempt by a group of suffragettes to blow up Lisburn Cathedral in 1914. Written by Maggie Cronin and Carol Moore and performed by Maggie Cronin, Carol Moore and Laura Hughes, it will examine what made a respectable middle class supporter of women’s rights resort to active militancy. Admission is free. Afterwards, tours of the building and its collections will also be available to anyone who is interested. To book places, please contact Deborah Douglas on 028 9032 1707 or email. 5 March: Launch of the 24-Hour Domestic and Sexual Violence Helpline at the Stormont Hotel from 11.30am. Join Women’s Aid at the Stormont Hotel from 11.30am to celebrate the launch of this new helpline. Lunch will be provided. Please register if you wish to attend. 7 March: Fem the Vote Workshop Black Box, Belfast, at 12 noon. Why aren't more young women voting? This women-only workshop in the Black Box from NUS-USI will delve right into the issue, exploring female voter registration and what topics matter to NI women. To register click here. 8 March: Rally for International Women’s Day 2014 at 12 noon, at the Art College, Belfast. After assembling at the Art College, we will march our way to the City Hall for 1pm, where there will be a welcome from the Lord Mayor, songs, speeches and a buffet. Everyone welcome. Bradford: 7 – 9 March: Equal Fest #4 at The 1 in 12 Club, Bradford AND Wharf Chambers, Leeds EQUAL fest is a DIY benefit festival for women's rights groups and the bands are playing for free or traveling expenses. EQUAL fest supports and wishes to encourage woman's involvement in DIY punk / hardcore and political music scene and would like to inspire more females to get involved. That's why all the bands that are playing have at least one non male gender member. EQUAL fest supports gender, racial, social, generational, cultural etc. equality and opposes any forms of oppression, inequality and discrimination. This event is happening at the 1 in 12 club in Bradford, a members owned and run social centre based on anarchist principals, self-management, co-operation and mutual aid and in Wharf Chambers in Leeds, worker co-op run bar, cafe, venue and community space. For the full line up, click here. Bristol: 7 March: Women and the politics of work at Watershed, 1 Canon's Road, Bristol, from 6.30pm. To mark Women's History Month, Bristol University are bringing together women who took action in the workplace: Sally Groves, who played a key role in the Trico Equal Pay Strike in 1976; Miriam Glucksmann, a sociologist who wrote Women On The Line after a year working in a motor parts factory; and Mila Navarra from the campaign organisation Justice For Domestic Workers. Admission free. 8 March: Changing the World for Women and Girls at M Shed, Princes Wharf, Wapping Road, Bristol, from 7.30pm-10.30pm. Join M Shed for an evening of debate, film, music and Fairtrade refreshments to celebrate International Women's Day 2014. Organised by the Bristol Fairtrade Network. Highlights include: Margarita Espinoza from Soppexcca Co-operative; music from The Cat's Pyjamas and Makala Cheung; film screening 'In the House, In Bed and On the Streets', direct from the Feminist Film Festival in London; panel debate 'How do we end violence against women?' Tickets £8/£6. 8 March: International Women’s Day – Fem FM Revisited at the M Shed, Princes Wharf, Wapping Road, Bristol, from 3pm-5pm. In 1992, over 200 women made history in Bristol by setting up the UK’s first women’s radio station – Fem FM. Bristol Record Office has digitised the original broadcast tapes, now available for research as part of the Fem FM archive of recordings, photographs and other material. To mark the launch of the archive a panel discussion about women’s achievements in radio over the past two decades will ask ‘Is the climate better for women broadcasters in 2014?’ 9 March: Translation / Transmission: Calypso Rose – The Lioness of the Jungle + Intro at The Watershed, 1 Canon's Road, Harbourside, Bristol, from 1pm. March is Women’s History Month and the Translation/Transmission season at the Watershed will celebrate the diverse ways women activists have communicated their struggle and resistance through film. An exuberant and inspiring ambassador for the Caribbean, Calypso Rose is the uncontested and much decorated diva of Calypso music. With more than 800 recorded songs, she continues to be a pioneer and champion of women’s rights, as she travels the world making music. French-Cameroonian filmmaker Pascale Obolo spends four years with Calypso Rose on a very personal journey. Travelling to Paris, New York, Trinidad and Tobago and to her ancestral home in Africa, we learn more about Calypso Rose in each place, and the many faces and facets of her life. The daughter of an illiterate Trinidadian fisherman, she was one of ten children, and was sent to live with relatives in Tobago at the age of 9. At 15 she wrote her first song and launched a career that took her to the top of the male-dominated calypso world. This creative film is not only about memory and the exchange and discovery of world cultures, but also about the journey of a remarkable woman, an Afro-Caribbean soul and an exemplary artist. With an introduction and singing performance from Nia Bumkubwa. Ticket prices: £5.50 full /£4.00 concessions. Cambridge: 5 March: Book launch: ‘The Meaning of Success: Insights from Women at Cambridge’, at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge CB3 9DP from 5.30pm-7pm. Hosted by Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge. ‘The Meaning of Success’ profiles 26 women at Cambridge – from world-leading academics, to key administrative staff – and features contributions from another 100. It seeks to understand how women in academia value success, and concludes that the University of Cambridge – and the higher education sector more generally – would benefit from a wider, more inclusive definition of success; one that benefited women as much as it did men. To book your place, click here. Cardiff: 8 March: Stop Violence Against Women at City Hall Lawn, Cardiff, from 4pm – 7pm. Cardiff Feminist Network presents International Women's Day 2014: Stop Violence Against Women Speakers including: Rhian Davies, Cardiff Women’s Aid; Susan Pashkoff, economist and anti-cuts campaigner; Sara Mayo, CFN campaigner (personal capacity) and many more… Plus poetry by Mab Jones, music and creative writing readings, including “Mis(s) Seen” by Cardiff poets Merched Mentrus’. Coventry: 7 March: celebrate International Women's Day at FWT – a Centre for Women: a Health and Wellbeing coffee morning at 70-72 Elmsdale Avenue, Foleshill, Coventry CV6 6ES from 10.30 am – 12 noon. Diverse events are held every Friday of the month. FWT (Foleshill Women’s Training) an award-winning, women only centre, that has been operating since 1989 and is dedicated to helping all women in Coventry and the surrounding areas through its social, health and economic programmes. Durham: 8 March: Conference: Literary Dolls: The Female Textual Body from the 19th Century to Now, at the University of Durham The artistic presentation of women's bodies has been widely understood as a celebration of the beauty of the female form, but many of these depictions serve to fetishise their physical form, to dismember them and to control women in general, both within the arts and in the wider world. This interdisciplinary conference seeks to appraise the depiction of women's physical form in the arts and how far artistic presentation has informed other disciplines from the 19th century to now. We seek to assess how far the arts have changed in line with apparent developments in the treatment of women over the comparable historical gulf. We are also keen to consider the social impact the arts have had, and continue to have, on the treatment of women. Papers will discuss textual presentation of women's bodies including includes literary depictions, but also those in film, television, digital media, the visual arts and the applied social sciences. Keynote speakers: Winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Jane Smiley; Professor Jo Phoenix, University of Durham and Dr Kate MacDonald, University of Ghent. For information email this address. In association with the University of Durham's Centre for Sex, Gender and Sexualities. Edinburgh: 5 March: Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre fundraiser and International Women's Day celebration at The Outhouse, 12a Broughton Street Lane, Edinburgh, from 8pm. Join Edinburgh Feminist Network for an (early) celebration of International Women’s Day and to raise funds for Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre. People are welcome to bring ‘pot luck’ food to share but drinks must be purchased in the bar. There will be music, a cake sale, clothing sale, a raffle and other delights… 75 per cent of EWRASAC’s frontline support and counselling services are currently at serious risk due to the end of funding streams at 31 May 2014. They offer free and confidential emotional and practical support, information and advocacy to women, girls aged 12 and over, and all members of the transgender community, who have experienced sexual violence from male or female abusers at any time in their lives. This includes rape, sexual assault, childhood sexual abuse and ritual abuse. Kingston-upon-Thames: 8 March: International Women’s Day Women workers fight back against MITIE abuse from 2pm. On International Women’s Day, women from the IWGB trade union are organising an event at Kingston University. Women from the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts are supporting them. We would like you to come along with us and bring people. The IWGB is the union that organises cleaners and other outsourced workers at University of London, and has been leading the inspiring ’3 Cosas’ campaign in recent months. IWGB women are going down to Kingston because Kingston University has honoured Ruby McGregor-Smith, the CEO of MITIE. McGregor-Smith has been given awards for "diversity in business", but the reality is that MITIE are accused of being an anti-union company, that severely exploit workers. The company also runs six prisons, including two youth offender institutions. They are "partners" with the Prison Service and the UK Border Agency. NCAFC Women are going to Kingston to tell the world that MITIE and its CEO represent oppression, and that Kingston University’s homage to her represents an insult to MITIE workers. The real inspiration is women workers fighting for their rights. They stand in the tradition of the struggling women workers who began International Women’s Day more than a century ago. Hosted by Kingston Uni UCU, they will be sharing food and drink hearing from MITIE workers; watching a documentary about their situation and their struggle against it; discussing ideas for campaigning about it; listening to South American folk music and dance; and reading a mural of writings produced by the IWGB English class for International Women’s Day. Leeds: 7 – 9 March: Equal Fest #4 at The 1 in 12 Club, Bradford AND Wharf Chambers, Leeds EQUAL fest is a DIY benefit festival for women's rights groups and the bands are playing for free or traveling expenses. EQUAL fest supports and wishes to encourage woman's involvement in DIY punk / hardcore and political music scene and would like to inspire more females to get involved. That's why all the bands that are playing have at least one non male gender member. EQUAL fest supports gender, racial, social, generational, cultural etc. equality and opposes any forms of oppression, inequality and discrimination. This event is happening at the 1 in 12 club in Bradford, a members owned and run social centre based on anarchist principals, self-management, co-operation and mutual aid and in Wharf Chambers in Leeds, worker co-op run bar, cafe, venue and community space. For the full line up, click here. London: 4 March: 'Conversation' about Money and Equality at New Theatre, East Building, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A, from 6pm-7.30pm. With the arrival of The Women's Library at LSE, the Gender Institute will be running a series of ‘Conversations’ for which audience participation is invited. Money and material resources are unequally distributed throughout the world. This conversation discusses the part that gender plays in this universal pattern and the ways in which gendered financial inequality can be challenged. Diane Elson is professor of sociology at the University of Essex. Ruth Lister is emeritus professor of social policy at Loughborough University and a member of the House of Lords. This event is free and open to all, with no ticket required. Entry is on a first come, first served basis. 8 March: Protest Amnesty International at Amnesty International, Peter Benenson House, 1 Easton Street, London WC1X, from 6pm. Amnesty International UK are proposing to adopt a policy position which advocates for the decriminalisation of punters and pimps across the world. Further to this, a pimp who held a leadership role in the organisation is claiming that he was the instigator and driver of the policy. Amnesty is currently consulting with members and other groups about the proposed policy. If you would like to take part in the consultation by opposing Amnesty's support of pimps and punters rights, please come along and show your opposition on March 8th. The 8 March is International Women's Day and Million Women Rise (MWR) in the UK. We are organising this protest to take place after the Million Women Rise march (and immediately before the after party) at the London Amnesty head office, which is only a 20-minute walk from the MWR after party, so women can protest and then head to the after party afterwards. Hosted by Abolish Prostitution Now and Radfem UK; endorsed by: SPACE International, Survivors for Solutions, Edmonton Small Press Association, Julie Bindel, Spinifex Press, Organizing for Women’s Liberation, Feminist Current, Sisterhood Is Global Institute, Prostitution Research and Education, Manchester Feminist Network, Ruhama, Coalition Against Trafficking Women International, NoRMAs, Pink Cross Foundation Australia, Indigenous Women Against the Sex Industry, Esohe Aghatise, Associazione Iroko Onlus, Turin, Italy Until 22 March: The Mistress Contract by Abi Morgan at Jerwood Theatre downstairs, Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1W She and He are the pseudonyms of a real-life couple who live in separate houses in the same city on the west coast of America. She is 88. He is 93. For 30 years he has provided her with a home and an income, while she provides 'mistress services' – 'All sexual acts as requested, with suspension of historical, emotional, psychological disclaimers.' They first met at university and then lost touch. When they met again twenty years later, they began an affair when She – a highly educated, intelligent woman with a history of involvement in the feminist movement – asked her wealthy lover to sign the remarkable document that outlines their unconventional lifestyle: The Mistress Contract. Was her suggestion a betrayal of all that she and the women of her generation had fought for? Or was it brave, honest, and radical? Then — on a small recorder that fit in her purse — this extraordinary couple began to tape their conversations about their relationship, conversations that took place while travelling, over dinner at home and in restaurants, on the phone, even in bed. Based on reams of tape recordings made over their 30 year relationship, The Mistress Contract is a remarkable document of this unconventional couple, and the contract that kept them bound together to this day. Tickets £32, £22, £16, £12. Until 23 March: Hannah Höch exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1. Hannah Höch was an artistic and cultural pioneer. A member of Berlin's Dada movement in the 1920s, she was a driving force in the development of 20th century collage. Splicing together images taken from fashion magazines and illustrated journals, she created a humorous and moving commentary on society during a time of tremendous social change. Höch was admired by contemporaries such as George Grosz, Theo van Doesburg and Kurt Schwitters, yet was often overlooked by traditional art history. As the first major exhibition of her work in Britain, the show puts this inspiring figure in the spotlight. A determined believer in artistic freedom, Höch questioned conventional concepts of relationships, beauty and the making of art. Höch's collages explore the concept of the 'New Woman' in Germany following World War I and capture the style of the 1920s avant-garde theatre. The important series 'From an Ethnographic Museum' combines images of female bodies with traditional masks and objects, questioning traditional gender and racial stereotypes. Astute and funny, this exhibition reveals how Höch established collage as a key medium for satire while being a master of its poetic beauty. Tickets £9.95/£7.95. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: 5 March: Celebrating INternational WOmen’s Day a showcase of research on women and inequality at Lipman Building, Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, from 12.45pm–4.30pm. Featuring presentations by: Dr Pamela Davies: "Bearing the Brunt of Harm and Criminal Victimisation: Women, vulnerability and resilience" Centre for Offenders and Offending; Dr Carol Stephenson: "The eye of the beholder: Women's use of photography in the fight for Cape Breton Coal Mining" Centre for Civil Society and Citizenship; Dr Kirsten Haack: "Breaking the glass ceiling but not glass walls? Women in executive roles in politics and international relations" Centre on International Public Policy and Management; Dr Katy Jenkins: "Making the extraordinary everyday: Women anti-mining activists' narratives of staying put and carrying on in Peru and Ecuador" Centre for International Development. This event is free. Sunderland: 5 March: 'Stop the Council Cuts' March and Mass Lobby at Park Lane, Vine Place End, Sunderland, from 1pm. Sunderland City Council is planning on implementing around £110 million of cuts over the next 3 years. This will mean the loss of jobs and public services in Sunderland. The Council will meet at 2pm on 5 March to vote on the budget for 2014/15; join the Sunderland People's Assembly and march to the council chambers and lobby the council to oppose these cuts. Dublin: 5 March: The Spring Pub Quiz! at Doyles, 9 College Street, Dublin, from 7.30pm. Dublin Nights for Choice welcome you to the first of many events in 2014. They invite you to one of their always successful, always enjoyable, always boozy weeknight table quizzes. This time around they are incredibly lucky to have comedian Alison Spittle as quizmaster. YAY! As usual, it’s a fiver a head with teams preferably comprising of 4 members (although 3 or 5 is ok too), and also as usual, if you’re on your own come on down and we’ll hook you up with a team. Raffle prizes, booze, sound and sexy people, and all funds raised go straight to the good folk at ASN, helping women on the ground. So please get your name down, get sharing, and may the best team win!  |
| Samba band record attempt for footballers Posted: 03 Mar 2014 02:17 AM PST
In March, ahead of the FIFA World Cup, the second-ever Street Child World Cup (SCWC) – like the World Cup proper – will take place in Rio de Janeiro. SCWC will unite teams of street children from up to 20 countries, drawn from a network of outstanding projects campaigning for the rights of street children. And this year the Street Child World Cup kicks off a girls-only competition. Ten teams of street-connected girls, aged 14 – 17, will both play football and take part in an international conference highlighting the issues girls face living and working on the streets. England will be represented by a girls' team made up of nine young people aged 14-17 who have experienced homelessness in London. About 67,000 children in England are looked after away from their family home, and just under half of these – 44 per cent – are girls. Team England have been training every week with coaches from Arsenal in the Community and Chelsea Ladies' and England player, Claire Rafferty. Rafferty is also a business analyst for Deutsche Bank – Team England sponsors. 'Representing your country is one thing; doing it so that others can get a better life is priceless. I am amazed by the passion and energy the girls are giving to this tournament and am delighted to be part of it,' she said. The girls are sponsored by Deutsche Bank's youth engagement programme, Born to Be, and StreetSmart, an organisation which raises money via leading restaurants and hotels for hundreds of projects tackling homelessness throughout the UK. The girls' tournament is an important statement of solidarity with street girls who are so often both unseen and denied the opportunities to play sport. It provides these girls with an opportunity to change people’s perception and challenge stereotypes and for their stories to be heard. The girls' tournament is not to be seen as separate from the Street Child World Cup as a whole; it is crucial to engage boys with the issues girls on the streets face, since they are often (but of course not always) the perpetrators of such abuse. The idea is that engaging both girls and boys together means supportive and respectful behaviours can be taught. SCWC has support from women's national and league teams; Brazil's women’s team are being role models and ambassadors for the girls, and will run workshops and mentor them during their time in Rio. The first Street Child World Cup was in South Africa 2010, just before of the FIFA World Cup. An organisation called Umthombo had been campaigning for a decade to end the illegal 'rounding-up' of street children. That had intensified ahead of the tournament. The idea was for a World Cup which included rather than excluded street children. It was a great success and the 'Durban Declaration', which was produced by and for the children, was presented to the UN Committee on Human Rights and to the governments of the teams which took part. The issues for girls: Girls are more often abused, denied opportunities and basic rights. It is a sad reality that many girls are on the street due the simple fact that they are a girl – some come to the street for example because they are escaping a life of domestic servitude, expected due to their gender. The kinds of situations girls have left behind when they arrived on the streets often make reintegration with girls far more complex. Typically, there are fewer girls than boys on the streets – in many places they stay hidden either to protect themselves or because once they come to the streets they are forced to get involved in less visible activities such as prostitution. Gender stereotypes are being lived out because girls are not properly supported or represented – they are neglected, marginalized and vulnerable to gender-based violence and abuse, both on the streets and in the situations leading up to their arrival there. There are not enough specific services for street connected girls, and many projects find it difficult to engage them. But SCWC does not want to just focus on the hardships and injustices girls face on the street; the Street Child World Cup girls tournament is an opportunity to talk about the positives – to show the world their potential and hopes for the future. You can join the girls on the Road to Rio by following and sharing their stories here. And on 3 March over 1,500 children, aged 7 to 16, from 27 London schools will take over London’s Royal Albert Hall to bang the drum for street children's rights and attempt to smash the official World Record for the World's Largest Samba Band – currently standing at 1,038. This performance also marks the UK launch of the second Street Child World Cup. Support the youngsters and street children's rights and text SCWC14 and the amount to 70070 to donate to Street Child World Cup and help make a difference. The Albert Hall event will feature an exclusive performance of the official SCWC anthem "I Am Somebody" by Hospital Records artists London Elektricity, S.P.Y and Diane Charlemagne. It is available from iTunes here. Hospital Records – one of the biggest labels in UK dance music – are donating all proceeds to Street Child World Cup. So you can buy the song, share this video with your friends, your family and your colleagues – and support street children. Magic. Thanks.  |
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