The predicted rain managed to behave in an orderly fashion as dozens of women met the dawn on Main Beach in Byron Bay for the 8th annual V-Day rally.
V-Day Byron Bay is an annual event as part of 1 Billion Rising. On February 14 Main Beach is flash mobbed by women (and a few blokes) in red.
V-Day Byron Bay is facilitated by a group of local women making a stand to end violence against women.
V-Day is a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls that raises funds and awareness through benefit productions of Playwright/Founder Eve Ensler’s award winning play The Vagina Monologues and other artistic works.
The V-Day movement has raised over $100 million; educated millions about the issue of violence against women and the efforts to end it; crafted international educational, media and PSA campaigns; reopened shelters; and funded over 13,000 community-based anti-violence programs and safe houses in Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Kenya, South Dakota, Egypt, and Iraq.
V-Day has received numerous acknowledgements and awards and is, one of the top-rated organizations on both Charity Navigator and Guidestar.
V-Day’s most recent global campaign, ONE BILLION RISING, galvanized over one billion women and men on a global day of action towards ending violence against women and girls.
Break the Chain
V-Day Byron begins with a choreographed dance to the Break The Chain written and produced by legendary music dynamo Tena Clark, with music by Tena Clark and Tim Heintz – Break The Chain features an impressive cast of V-Girl activists and New York-based singers: Liz Byrne, Shelea Frazier, Ashley Juedy, Dana Kluczyk, Jenny Mollett, Jenna Brooke Scannelli, Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa, Naomi Walley, and Caitlin Witty.
The Break The Chain dance was choreographed by dance icon Debbie Allen has choreographed a dance just for ONE BILLION RISING. The music video features Allen with the over 80 teen V-Girls and singers bringing their radical RISING energy to locations across NYC.
Following the main celebration many women took the opportunity to have a traditional quick skinny dip in the Pacific.
The V-Day Byron event is a precursor to the sold out season of the Vagina Conversations at Byron Bay Theatre tonight and tomorrow night, to fundraise for the Byron Escape Fund.
Photos by Jeff Dawson
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