Stardoll Continues its Support for the 16 Days Campaign
From Peace in the Home to Peace in the World – Show Us Your Vision of a Peaceful Home in a Peaceful World
Stockholm, Geneva and New York (November 25, 2011) – Stardoll, the globally renowned online fashion and social gaming community for teen girls today announced its continued support for the 16Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign in partnership with the Center for Global Women’s Leadership, FemLINKPACIFIC, the World YWCA, a global movement of 25 million women and girls.
The 16 Days Campaign, an initiative of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL), now in its 21st year, is an international campaign that seizes the power of hundreds of local organizations to raise global awareness about gender violence. The campaign was launched on November 25th, International Day Against Violence Against Women, and ends 16 days later on December 10th, International Human Rights Day. “The significance of these two dates is to squarely position gender violence as a human rights issue,” says Dr. Radhika Balakrishnan, Executive Director of CWGL.
Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, General Secretary of the World YWCA, stressed that “Young women and girls can provide tremendous leadership in promoting peace in their homes, their communities and the world. It starts with education and opportunities to engage, such as Stardoll’s campaign for the 16 Days of Activism. Every little action makes a difference and is the start of an unstoppable movement towards a world free of violence, where peace and human dignity are respected.”
In support of the 16 Days Campaign, Stardoll established an area on its site where members are introduced to the Campaign, can visit its Facebook page, sign a Peace Pledge, as well as receive a virtual purple ribbon in their suite; the purple ribbon is globally known as a visible gesture of support for survivors and victims of gender violence. Members will also be designing their own 16 Days items through Stardoll StarDesign and Starmovies, which will be featured throughout the Campaign. This will result in millions of girls worldwide making animated movies and designs about their vision of a peaceful world. To date, an astonishing 96,000 members have participated and joined the 16 Days Campaign on Stardoll.
Stardoll members are also invited to interact in Q&A sessions with several high- profile global leaders in an effort to provide the Stardoll community with an avenue to discuss issues around violence, abuse, and forming healthy relationships. To date, there have been nearly 7,400 questions to guest leaders. The leaders include:
- Radhika Balakrishnan – economist and professor and Executive Director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership
- Sharon Bhagwan Rolls – media activist and founding member of femLINKpacific
- Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda – General Secretary of the World YWCA and human rights lawyer.
The campaign also includes links to local organizations in Africa, Asia, Pacific, North America, Latin America, Middle East, and Europe so that Stardoll members can find out what’s happening near them.
“Stardoll is pleased to be joining forces with the Center for Women’s Global Leadership and support the16 Days Campaign for the second year in a row,” said Mattias Miksche, CEO of Stardoll. “By including StarDesign and StarMovies key tools of self-expression and design among our members, it’s certain to strike a cord on Stardoll over the next 16 days and beyond.”
More about Stardoll
Stardoll is a free-to-play, fun-filled virtual world for girls, aged 9-17, who love fashion, shopping, decorating, creativity and making new friends from around the world. 138 million MeDoll avatars have been created to date with a new player joining every second making Stardoll the world’s largest teen site in the world! The company is based in Stockholm, with offices in Los Angeles, and London, and is backed by two of the world’s top venture capital firms: Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures. For more information visit.www.stardoll.com
More about the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL)
CWGL strengthens and facilitates women’s leadership for human rights and social justice worldwide. CWGL envisions a world in which all people are equal and gender equality is systemically realized by the achievement of human rights for all. The Center supports women’s leadership by: (i) facilitating and disseminating feminist analyses of economic and social rights and macroeconomic policies to better inform the work of civil society organizations and policy makers at the international and national levels; (ii) promoting an end to violence against women through organizing global campaigns, including the 16Days Campaign; and (iii) building coalitions among women’s and social justice organizations for policy reform at the international and national levels. www.cwgl.rutgers.edu │ www.16dayscwgl.rutgers.edu.
More about the World YWCA
The World YWCA is a global network of women and young women leading social and economic change in 125 countries. It advocates for peace, justice, human rights and care of the environment, and has been at the forefront of raising the status of women for over a century. The World YWCA develops women’s leadership to find local solutions to the global inequalities women face. Each year, it reaches more than 25 million women and girls through work in over 22,000 communities. www.worldywca.org │women leading change blog