Help Build The City Of Joy...V-Day's 2010 Spotlight Campaign focuses on the Women and Girls of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In the DRC, an economic war has been fought for nearly the last two decades by militias who want control of Congo’s vast mineral resources. These minerals make their way into the hands of Western corporations, and ultimately our electronics. Look at your cell phone. Your laptop. Your net-book. World leaders and international bodies stand by, knowing what is happening, but they fail to act. There is too much profit at stake.

Close to 6 million people have already been killed. Millions more are displaced. Homeless. Many are children. In DRC, the tactic is to destroy the women; the girls, the feminine, and in so doing, destroy the ties that bind communities together.

Over 500,000 women and girls have already been raped and sexually tortured as a systematic tactic of the war. Some are girls as young as 18 months old. Raped with guns, knives, sticks, torn apart from the inside. Left to bleed, or worse; left alone, in shame.

But there is hope on the horizon. The City Of Joy. A sanctuary for women and girl survivors where they can receive medical care and long term housing and counseling along the rocky road to recovery.

Everyone is invited to be a part of the groundbreaking City of Joy project in Bukavu, DRC. You can help provide a bed, an education; give a girl a safe place to lay her head today, and help her learn to become a new leader, tomorrow.

Each of us can literally buy a single classroom chair, or a text-book. Nearly a generation has now gone by in the DRC without proper education - for the children, this means they have known nothing but war; learned nothing but violence and suffering. A bonfire of hope can start with a single flame.

For more information, please visit: https://secure.vday.org/catalog/index.php