Emma Watson - HeforShe Campaign : 'Women need to be equal participants'

http://loveisrespectnyab.tumblr.com/post/110588081362/no-more-campaigns-super-bowl-ad-wrongfully

February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month

Amanpour Interviews Malala, "The Bravest Girl in the World"

Sixteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai just wanted to go to school.

But the Taliban warned her against it and, because she refused to be intimidated, shot her in the head and nearly killed her on her school bus.

Miraculously, Yousafzai survived the assassination attempt.

Now, she shares her message for girls education with the world in a town hall with CNN Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour in New York City Thursday night.

“The thing is, they can kill me, they can only kill Malala. But it does not mean they can kill my cause as well. My cause of education, my cause of peace and my cause of human rights. My cause of equality will still be surviving. They cannot kill my cause,” she says.

“I think she's a prodigy,” Amanpour says. “Because she speaks like an adult, yet she does have that child-like nature of this optimism, this hope, this idealism."

The inspiring youth’s father, who was on stage with her last night, describes his daughter as having a defiance based on a refusal to live in slavery.

“He's one of her biggest champions,” Amanpour says.  “He was so besotted by his daughter. And he is a rare bird, too, a free and progressive thinker in a place where you wouldn't necessarily think that was the case. And he put all of that on his daughter.”

Despite what she has overcome, Yousafzai considers her survival a miracle and is determined to continue fighting for her cause, eventually as Prime Minister of her country. 

“Because through politics I can serve my whole country,” she says. “I can be the doctor of the whole country, and I can help children to get education, to go to school. I can improve the quality of education, and I can spend much of the money from the budget on education.”

“She’s really adored in her home country,” Amanpour says, “by a certain huge portion, but hated by another portion who are either jealous of her or the Taliban, who do not want to see a girl behaving like that and getting that kind of limelight or even going to school. And that's where her battle is and that’s where the battle for all Pakistani young girls right now in certain parts of the country still remains.”

By Cristina Maza  With the release of her biography, I Am Malala, the spotlight has once again been shone on Malala Yousafzai, the 16-year-old girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban for speaking in favor of educating young girls in Pakistan. To many, Malala is a hero. She has spoken on Western television in numerous interviews, leaving John Stewart at a loss for words as he gushed over her inspirational courage. She was even recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

But while Malala’s story is incredibly inspirational, there is also a darker side to her stardom. By heaping praise on Malala, Western audiences deny their governments’ role in Pakistan's struggle with the Taliban and promote a simplistic view of international conflicts.

It is no great secret that people like to break narratives up into easily digestible chunks, and Malala’s story is one that is easy for Western consumers to understand and relate to their own set of moral values. That is why it has been easy for Malala to be unwittingly transformed into a symbol for Western consumption and a tool for demarcating the symbolic line between the West and “the other.” The story begins with Malala’s father’s exceptionally progressive attitude towards educating women. This attitude helped Malala develop a deep passion for learning, equality, and justice at a very young age.

Malala's biography reads like the stories of many fictional heroines that young girls grow up with. Malala is intelligent and fiery with dreams of changing the world, but the book has the added benefit of being a true story that is easily interwoven with important global issues such as human rights, development, education, and peace. It is no wonder that people love Malala, and view her as a symbol of both everything that is both right and wrong with the world today. However, Malala's rise to fame has not solved Pakistan's many problems. Young girls in Pakistan are still fearful when they attend school, and their communities are plagued with the constant threat of Taliban violence and Western drones.

Malala’s message is an undeniably important one: that everyone has the right to an education. However, behind this simple and moving story is the more complicated relationship between Asia and the West, highlighted by the exceptional nature of Malala’s rise to fame. In early 2009, when Malala was only 11-years-old, she began writing a blog for the BBC about life under the Taliban. Once the Taliban discovered her identity, she and her father were added to the Taliban’s list of targets, and in October 2012 she was shot in the head while riding home on a school bus. Miraculously surviving the attack, she was rushed to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital inBirmingham, England for intensive rehabilitation.

Following this incident, Gordon Brown, the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education, launched a UN petition in her name, using the slogan "I am Malala"  (which is also the title of her biography), to demand that all children worldwide be in school by the end of 2015. The petition helped to ratify Pakistan's first Right to Education Bill, leading TIME magazine to feature Malala on its cover and as one of "The 100 Most Influential People in the World." She was later invited to speak at the UN to call for worldwide access to education. Her status as an international star was official and the world saw what one little girl can stand for if only given an outlet to express herself.

However, not everyone is impressed with the West’s idealization of Malala. This week, Storify collected Tweets discussing "Why Conspiracy Theories About Malala Go Viral."  The answer, unfortunately, is quite simple. It is the same reason that many Pakistanis are far less enthusiastic about Malala’s rise to fame than their Western counterparts. Observers view it as blatantly hypocritical when one person is idealized while so many others in similar situations are ignored. Other girls brutalized by the Taliban don’t get rushed to Western hospitals, and most of them do not survive an attack. Because Malala was hand selected by the BBC and given a mouthpiece in the Western media, she had a privileged position that allowed her to be rescued.

As one Twitter commentator stated, “If the international media thinks Malala is so adorable, why don’t they care about the innocents killed in drone attacks?” There is a prevailing sentiment that the Malala story is a convenient drama utilized by the West to demonstrate and criticize the barbarity of countries like Pakistan, while doing nothing to improve the situation. If anything, Western powers make the situation worse by dropping bombs on faceless victims who don’t receive the same attention or heroic status as Malala.

Absent from the West’s portrayal of Malala’s story is a critique of Western military operations in the region and their use a rallying cry to radicalize militants against the Pakistani government. Her story is far too easy for everyone to embrace without looking critically at the situation on the ground. However, in a recent meeting with Barack Obama, Malala herself informed the U.S. president that drone attacks are fueling terrorism.

If there is one thing that I am Malala should teach us, it is to look beyond Manichean narratives of good and evil. It is important to applaud Malala for the awareness she has built around important issues like education for young women,, but unless we also look critically at the role of Western policies in the region, Malala's story only helps to alienate foreign nations and separate the West even further from its perceived “other.”

Mary Pat Christie announces partnership to help fund domestic violence programs

By Megan Goldschmidt, The Trentonian

POSTED: 10/15/13, 10:34 AM EDT |

HAZLET — Last week, the First Lady of New Jersey helped announce a new partnership to address domestic violence.

With October being Domestic Violence Awareness month, Mary Pat Christie joined officials from Verizon, the New Jersey Department of Children and Families (DCF) and the New Jersey Coalition for Battered Women (NJCBW) at 180 Turning Lives Around in Hazlet. The partnership seeks to increase public awareness of domestic violence programs and services, especially among those most affected by Superstorm Sandy, according to a release sent out Thursday.

“Domestic violence affects one in four women in their lifetime,” said Christie. “Don’t let a member of our community become another statistic. I commend these organizations for spotlighting this difficult issue and offering victims, survivors and families affected by domestic abuse the support necessary to heal and recover.”

The partnership’s efforts are being funded through a $30,000 Verizon Foundation grant and a $20,000 Verizon Wireless Hopeline grant. The NJCBW’S plans include, improving its website, developing domestic violence awareness and prevention brochures, and producing a video public service announcement featuring the First Lady promoting New Jersey’s domestic violence services for victims, survivors and their families.

NJCBW is a statewide association that provides leadership, support and resources on the prevention of violence against women in New Jersey.

Verizon has a long history of supporting domestic violence abuse victims. Since 2000, Verizon and the Verizon Foundation have provided more than $65 million in grants to domestic violence prevention organizations and shelters across the county. Through its HopeLine initiative, Verizon Wireless puts the company’s technology to work in the community by turning no-longer-used wireless phones and accessories into support for domestic violence victims and survivors.

“Superstorm Sandy sadly brought physical and emotional damage to many New Jersey families, and Verizon continues to work every day to support their long road to recovery. Thanks to the generosity of our customers who recycle their old cell phones through our Hopeline program and our Verizon Foundation, we are able to help non-profit organizations like 180 Turning Lives Around so they can continue to provide the critical services that many domestic violence survivors need in order to move forward from an unhealthy relationship,” said Pat Devlin, president of Verizon Wireless’ New York Metro region, in the release.

Allison Blake, the DCF Commissioner, said that families affected by natural disasters face enormous stress that can outstretch their ability to cope. According to her previous knowledge of natural disasters,a product of that stress can be the increase of domestic violence.

“Hurricane Sandy unleashed devastation in our community that runs deeper than the obvious physical damage that the storm created. Depression, anxiety, violence and abuse have increased as the months have passed and families struggle to deal with the after-effects of the storm. We are so grateful to partner with the Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund, the Verizon Foundation/ Verizon Wireless and the State’s Department of Children and Family Services to address the increased needs of domestic violence victims, many who were affected by Sandy,” said Anna Diaz-White, executive director of 180 Turning Lives Around, Inc.

Baltimore Student focused on "paying it forward".

Study: Dating Violence Is Common Among Young Americans

Though many teens say they have been victimized, almost an equal amount admit to committing dating violence

Nearly a third of teens report having experienced dating violence, according to a new report.

About a third of American youths say they have been victims of dating violence,
either physically, sexually or psychologically. But nearly the same amount also said they have been on the offending end, according to new research presented at the American Psychological Association's annual convention on Wednesday.
Researchers surveyed more than 1,000 individuals between the ages of 14 and 20 and found an overlap between reports of victimization and perpetration. Of the girls surveyed, 41 percent said they had been victims of dating violence, but 35 percent said they had committed dating violence at some point. The divide was slightly greater for boys, with 37 percent saying they had been victims of dating violence and 29 percent saying they had been the perpetrator.

Overall, 24 percent of girls and boys reported being both on the receiving and offending ends in either the same or different relationships.

"These rates of adolescent dating violence are alarming and suggest that dating violence is simply too common among our youth," said researcher Michele Ybarra, of the Center for Innovative Public Health Research, in a statement.Researchers found that girls were far more likely than boys to report being victims of sexual dating violence, as well as committing physical dating violence. On the other hand, boys more often said they had committed sexual dating violence. Though the rates overall typically increased with age, the findings were consistent across race, ethnicity and income levels.

Ybarra said in the statement that the overlap between victimization and perpetration should play a role in developing prevention programs and that those constructing the programs should not "assume there are distinct victims and perpetrators.""We need to think about the dynamics within relationships that may result in someone both perpetrating and being victimized by their partner; as well as the extent to which dating abuse may follow a teen from one relationship to another," Ybarra said.Low and Espelage studied 625 youths who took surveys six times, duringthe course of five years from middle school through high school. They found that those who reported higher levels of bullying in the earlier surveys were seven times more likely to report being physically violent in relationships at the conclusion of the study.
"These findings indicate that bully prevention needs to start early in order to prevent the transmission of violence in dating relationships," Espelage said in a statement.

In a separate presentation of new research, Sabina Low of Arizona State University and Dorothy Espelage of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign described research that shows bullying at a younger age can increase dating violence among young Americans in later years.