Letting our elected officials hear from us with letters, emails and phone calls is important. But one congressman recently suggested that the most effective way to exert influence in Congress is to influence public opinion through our own communities. This is what our job should be as activists.
Dear friends and colleagues,
This message is to ask once again for your active support to the Say NO to Violence against Women campaign. We have good news to report: We have been issued a challenge — the United Nations Foundation is prepared to contribute $100,000 to the UNIFEM-managed UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women that provides badly needed resources to local initiatives aimed at ending violence against women. But there’s a catch. The $100,000 is a challenge grant — $100,000 in exchange for 100,000 names recorded in the “say NO to violence against women” campaign book. The challenge will be publicly announced on 22 January.
Of course we have accepted the challenge — and we know that with your help we can succeed. Nearly 18,000 have signed the book and 8,000 of them have asked to be kept informed. In addition, in China a network of supporting organizations has been able to mobilize more than 12,000 people to join the campaign on a separate web site that will now be linked live into the campaign. Like you, organizations and individuals from around the world are involved and participating, but we need to let people know about the challenge and ask once again for their help.
I would like to ask you to make use of this renewed opportunity and reach out again to your constituencies as you have done so successfully before. On 22 January, we will be sending out a press release that announces the grant. From Headquarters, a new email from Goodwill Ambassador Nicole Kidman will be sent to all our launch partners, supporting organizations and other contacts, both individuals and organizations. A special issue of our newsletter Currents will follow shortly thereafter. Please use these materials as you see fit to alert your networks. You may also want to consider using the banners and other tools available in our campaign toolkit. In time for the grant announcement, an HTML, or low-bandwidth, version of the site will be ready to facilitate access for basically all Internet users.
Thank you again for your continued support.
With best regards,
