International Women’s Day:­ Circle of Stories

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Mar 8

Share your stories this International Women’s Day. Take Back The Tech invites you to listen, speak, recognise and remember.

To effect change, we need to understand the reality of violence against women.

The prevalence of violence against women means that chances are, all of us have encountered it in some way or another in our lives. Whether it’s our own personal experience, someone we know, a story we heard, or something we read.

Within these stories are the structural realities that we all share: How does violence against women happen? What kinds of cultural and social environments enable them to persist? Who commits them? Who survives them? How have we dealt with incidences of violence against women personally, and collectively?

We carry these struggles and knowledge through our lived experiences. And these experiences can be powerful stories of change.

What is your story? Have you heard a story that you would like to share? Can you spare a moment to listen?

Make stories matter. Wear a story band this International Women’s Day, and create a circle of stories that connects our fight to end violence against women.

Make a story band

A story band is a wrist band that you can make yourself from any materials you choose: paper, cloth, ribbon, cardboard etc. As long as you can write on it and wear it around your wrist. Make a few to pass it on. You can download a sample design from the Take Back The Tech website here: http://www.takebackthetech.net/IWDstoryband.

Write “Ask me” on the band, and invite people that you meet on International Women’s Day to ask about your story. After you have shared your story, give them a band of their own, and ask them to continue telling and listening to stories with other people that they meet.

You can also write your story on your band, and send us a picture. We’ll put it up on the campaign website to widen the circle.

kaBLOG your story

If you have a blog, post your story and include a blog band. You can download the image from the Take Back The Tech website here: http://www.takebackthetech.net/IWDstoryband.

Invite your readers to do the same.

Tag your post by adding this code at the end of your post:

technorati tags: "http://technorati.com/tag/takebackthetech" rel="tag" ds_newline="directory">takebackthetech

We chose a band because these are stories that we carry with us and has affected our lives in significant ways. It also signifies that we are connected in our individual struggles to end violence against women.

Create a circle of stories. Listen, speak, recognise, remember, know and transform the reality of violence against women this International Women’s Day.