FWN AGAINST VIOLENCE
Filipinas Against Violence is the Filipina Women's Network's annual anti-domestic violence campaign in collaboration with Eve Ensler's V-Day organization to raise awareness through theatre, popular culture and education about the high incidence of violence in Asian homes and intimate partner relationships. Our mission is to encourage Filipina and Asian women in abusive relationships take action and seek help. Engaging the Filipino and Asian communities through the V-Day shows and hearing the women's stories "hits home" and helps the Asian community understand the broader connections of Asian values such as respect for women, dignity, family, equality and justice to social and economic issues and to class and religion.
Why Get Involved
This is a campaign to end violence against women and girls as part of V-Day’s Worldwide Campaign
The Vagina Monologues is a key fundraiser for FWN’s Anti-Violence Awareness Campaign which we launched in 2003 in response to the 2000 unsolved murder of 22-year old Filipina woman Claire Joyce Tempongko who was stabbed multiple times in front of her two young children ages five and ten years old. The Tempongko case was instrumental in the City of San Francisco’s overhaul of its citywide response to domestic violence. Mayor Willie Brown created the Justice and Courage Oversight Committee to implement the Blueprint for San Francisco’s Response to Domestic Violence after the City was found liable for Tempongko’s murder and an investigation led by former City Attorney Louise Renne. Marily Mondejar was appointed to the Oversight Committee, It took almost 10 years for Tempongko’s murder to be solved - a difficult period for the Filipino community, a case that reached the California Supreme Court.
FWN’s Anti-DV Campaign has evolved to include anti-human trafficking initiatives with the Mayor’s Office, CourtWatch of DV homicides of Filipina women nationwide, rallies, support for legislation that protect women and girls in abusive situations, Handprints: Men Against Violence, the publication of the V-Diaries Anti-Violence Resource Guide and the annual benefit performance of The V Monologues.
2016 is our 11th year and we convene the performance to keep awareness of atrocities perpetrated against women and girls.
District Attorney Kamala D. Harris presented with the Vagina Warrior Award by FWN CEO, Marily Mondejar (center) in 2005. Pictured with Clara Tempongko (left), mother of Claire Joyce Tempongko.
What started in 2003 with what we thought was a simple play with an all-Filipina women cast, the show has now become FWN’s Anti-Violence Awareness Campaign after many challenges from the FilAm community because of the V-word. In 2009, we opened the casting to include API women with Assemblymember Fiona Ma, Supervisor Jane Kim, School Board Trustee Hydra Mendoza and other notable community leaders reading for the show. In 2012, the show casted Women of Color to expand our campaign. Supervisor Malia Cohen, Fabiola Kramsky (wife of DA Gascon), Eliana Lopez (who is now doing a Spanish version), Emerge’s Kimberly Ellis, Theresa Sparks, Cecilia Chung and Tita Aida, to name a few, have read for the show.
We have also expanded the show to include our men supporters with Handprints - asking the men in the audience to pledge not to hurt women - led by Mayor Lee, Assemblymembers David Chiu and Rob Bonta; San Francisco Supervisors Eric Mar, Norman Yee, Scott Wiener and our community of men leading the pledge. Our campaign has continued on with the rise of human trafficking of women and girls as young as six years old.
Our 2016 beneficiary is the Comfort Women Justice Coalition, an organization who is raising funds to build a Comfort Women Memorial in San Francisco. There’s a special monologue written by Eve Ensler for the Filipina Comfort Women she met in 2002. We include this monologue every year to highlight the Comfort Women Survivors now in their 80s and 90s as they continue to gather everyWednesday at the Japanese Embassy in the Manila, Philippines waiting for an official apology from Japan.
About V-Day
V-Day is a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls*. V-Day is a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money, and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations. V-Day generates broader attention for the fight to stop violence against women and girls, including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM), and sex slavery.
Through V-Day campaigns, local volunteers and college students produce annual benefit performances of The Vagina Monologues; A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer; documentary film screenings (What I Want My Words To Do To You), Spotlight Teach-Ins and workshops, to raise awareness and funds for anti-violence groups within their own communities. Each year, thousands of V-Day benefit events take place produced by volunteer activists in the U.S. and around the world, educating millions of people about the reality of violence against women and girls.
Learn more at VDay.org
About “The Vagina Monologues”
Hailed by The New York Times as "funny" and "poignant" and by the Daily News as "intelligent" and "courageous, The Vagina Monologues, which was first performed off-Broadway by Ms. Ensler, dives into the mystery, humor, pain, power, wisdom, outrage and excitement buried in women's experiences. Through this play and the liberation of this one WORD, countless women throughout the world have taken control of their bodies and their lives; giving voice to experiences and feelings not previously exposed in public.
Hailed as the bible for a new generation of women, it has been performed in cities all across America and at hundreds of college campuses, and has inspired a dynamic grassroots movement to stop violence against women. Witty and irreverent, compassionate and wise, Eve Ensler's Obie Award winning masterpiece gives voice to real women's deepest fantasies and fears, guaranteeing that no one who reads it will ever look at a woman's body, or think of sex, in quite the same way again.
