|
 US-based beauty products company Avon is celebrating in Brazil the success of the firm's first-ever global fundraising product, the Women's Empowerment Bracelet, which has sold 1.5 million units since launching in March. Avon Global Ambassador, Reese Witherspoon, told about the campaign, this August 28, at a press conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
The bracelet was first launched in March 2008 at the second annual Global Summit for a Better Tomorrow, presented by the United Nations Development Fund for Women, (UNIFEM) in partnership with Avon, at the United Nations in New York City. Witherspoon has taken this mission to empower women and raise awareness around the world this year, including visits in the United States and Japan.
At Brazil's press conference, she joined female luminaries, Nilcéa Freire, Brazil's Federal Secretary for Women Policies, Ana Falu, UNIFEM Regional Director for the Southern Cone, and bio-chemist and domestic violence survivor, Maria da Penha Maia Fernandes, who pioneered the fight against domestic violence in Brazil and inspired the creation of Maria da Penha Act legislation.
"As the company for women, and on this occasion of 50 years in Brazil, Avon is keenly aware of how important it is to work to put an end to this type of violence," says Luis Felipe Miranda, President of Avon Brazil. "We also understand how delicate the problem is, and the need to involve different sectors of society in this human rights issue which is why our public-private partnership with UNIFEM is so powerful."
"I find it shocking that one billion women globally - that is one in every three women - are affected by violence at some point in their lives. In Latin America, between 30 and 40 percent of all women aged fifteen or older have been subjected to some form of violence, most often by a member of their own family," said Witherspoon. "That's a statistic we must try to change, and the Women's Empowerment Bracelet is a great way for everyone to contribute."
The bracelet initiative was created to raise awareness about the need to speak out against the violence that affects women around the globe. In support of this mission, proceeds from the Women's Empowerment Bracelet will go to the Avon Empowerment Fund, which will contribute to the UNIFEM-managed UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women.
The first US$ 500,000 from bracelet sales have been matched in 2008 by the Avon Foundation for a total donation of US$ 1 million for new grants by the UN Trust Fund, representing the single-largest one-year corporate contribution to-date. Additional funds raised will support local domestic violence programs in each country Avon is located.
In Brazil, funds raised will enable UNIFEM to launch a comprehensive public awareness campaign on the groundbreaking Maria da Penha Act, which classifies domestic violence as a human rights violation and provides a new measure of protection for women in danger and requires the active participation of law enforcement and justice officials.
The UNIFEM initiative is aimed to help implement the law by providing the general public and key audiences, particularly law enforcement and justice officials, with the information they need to know to use its provisions.
"The partnership between Avon and UNIFEM will help women at risk, through the implementation of the Maria da Penha Act. By working together, we are supporting solutions to end violence against women and girls and promoting women's economic empowerment and rights," said UNIFEM Regional Director Ana Falu.
Avon and UNIFEM's public-private partnership expands the work of the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women, which supports innovative efforts by grass-roots organizations, often working with governments and the UN, to protect women from violence, help survivors access justice and enhance women's empowerment and rights.
Avon's contribution will increase the UN Trust Fund's grants to programs aimed at implementing laws and policies that reduce violence against women, with a special focus on increasing legal literacy and working with judicial, legal and law enforcement agencies and personnel, and other stakeholders, to increase the awareness, understanding and efficacy of these regulations.
The work carried out in Brazil is part of the Instituto Avon, a non-profit created in Brazil five years ago with the goal of making life better for women in Brazil. The funds raised in Brazil will expand the reach of Avon's Speak Out Against Domestic Violence campaign.
That campaign was first launched in 2004 in the US, and has already invested more than six million dollars there through the US Avon Foundation, supporting actions aiming to reduce violence against women. In 2008, with the global launch of the Avon Empowerment Bracelet, more than 30 Avon countries are now supporting Speak Out programs around the world.
Avon is a leading global beauty company, with over US$ 10 billion in annual revenue. As the world's largest direct seller, Avon markets to women in more than 100 countries through over 5.5 million independent Avon Sales Representatives. Avon's product line includes beauty products, fashion jewelry and apparel.
The Avon Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public charity, is the largest corporate foundation for women, with more than US$ 580 million raised worldwide for breast cancer, domestic violence and emergency disaster relief.
UNIFEM is the women's fund at the United Nations. It provides financial and technical assistance to innovative programs and strategies to foster women's empowerment and gender equality.
Placing the advancement of women's human rights at the center of all of its efforts, UNIFEM focuses its activities on reducing feminized poverty; ending violence against women; reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS among women and girls; and achieving gender equality in democratic governance in times of peace as well as war.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
xoxo