Anglican Women’s Empowerment (AWE), Episcopal Peace Fellowship (EPF), and the Episcopal Women’s Caucus (EWC) have created this blog to spread the word and create resources to encourage women and men in the Episcopal Church to participate in the “16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence” campaign.

The 16 Days campaign begins November 25, International Day Against Violence Against Women, and runs for 16 days until December 10, International Human Rights Day. Since 1991, more than 3,700 organizations in approximately 164 countries have participated. To learn more, click here.

During these 16 Days, we encourage churches to participate through prayer, special services to mark the occasion, sermons to emphasize the issue, speakers or films at adult forums, articles written in church and diocesan publications, and in many other ways. Choose something that works for you!

To make it simple, we are suggesting two particular resources for you to consider using:

• “Women, War & Peace,” a five-part special series on PBS, with a companion study guide available from AWE.
• An Episcopal 16 Days Resource Booklet of prayers, readings, poems and stories to help you plan your own services or observances.

We encourage you to share your own in this blog so others can benefit from your creative thinking!

Where Do I Start?

Right here. You’ll find a step-by-step guide to planning and organizing your own project.

Then take a look at this list of ways you can mark the 16 Days in your church; choose one and DO IT! Let us know what you did by posting your story.

Still need ideas? Click here to see a calendar of 2011 campaign activities from around the world scheduled so far.

Finally, click here for a host of resources on violence against women and related information.

You can also email us at episcopal16days@gmail.com or email the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at 16days@cwgl.rutgers.edu.

Together in solidarity, we lift up this very important issue.

Karen D. Bota, Publications Editor for EWC  http://www.episcopalwomenscaucus.org

Jackie Lynn, Executive Director for EPF  http://epfnational.org

Kim Robey, Executive Director for AWE  http://anglicanwomensempowerment.org