Wow! What a day we had on International Women’s Day! At Yellow Door, we were lucky enough to be involved in many events throughout the city.
We ran our own campaign on the day, linking with the theme #BreakTheBias. We invited local organisations, charities and groups to have a picture with our banner and to share a message on how they #BreakTheBias. All of the images can be found on our social media sites (click here for the Facebook album). You can also read their pledges. We are hoping to do something similar next year!
Libby and Holly, our Volunteer and Involvement Officers attended the “Women’s Wellbeing Event” at Central Library along with two fantastic volunteers, Ruth and Kirsty. We were inviting the attendees to decorate #ConsentRocks. The aim of these are to spread the message that consent is key in all relationships and provide messages of support for people who have been impacted by abuse. We also held “myth or fact” question games where people can learn about FGM and sexual abuse
The second event we attended was the “Inspirational Women’s Artists” Exhibition at God’s House Tower. Female identifying artists displayed and sold their work via a silent auction and 50% of the sales were donated to Yellow Door! Amazingly, they raised a total of £3,000; £1,708 of it was donated to us! We are so thankful!
Our final event of the day was hosted by Reclaim the Streets Southampton at Mettricks Guildhall. They invited a variety of guest speakers to talk on a panel about women’s safety, particularly in Southampton where rates of sexual offences are among the highest in England. Victoria, our Domestic Abuse Team Coordinator and Megan our STAR Project Coordinator were two of the seven guest speakers. The event was a great opportunity to talk in an open space about violence against women and girls (VAWG) and to reflect and remember those such as Sarah Everard who have so tragically lost their lives to violence. We were honoured to be a part of the discussion to raise awareness. You can watch the Reclaim the Streets panel discussion on their Facebook page here.
While International Women’s Day may be over for this year, we will continue to celebrate and support women every day! We hope next year’s events are as full of positivity and action as it was this year!