Street actions – a collective and natural way to express/change things around us…

Street actions are having a long history, being a way/tool that society used all among the human history to change things around, when our leaders were failing, or weren’t interested in that specific problems. Even if this a quite important and popular movement among the society, you won’t find any scientific research about it. Plus, in any country you won’t find any official guidance from the public bodies about how you should organize one of this, and which are the criteria that you have to meet in order to organize one. And I think we as human being as a society should pay more attention to that, because through the help of the street actions many historical things came, changed. Such things as eradicating the HIV epidemic, or fighting for animal rights and many others.

From my experience I can say that, I am coming from the Republic of Moldova, were protests, public manifestations and street actions are quite common and are happening almost every day. Still, I did take part in any. But, this changed from the moment when I started my EVS.

I know that I said it already but I will repeat it again, that I am very happy and lucky with the project that I have! Why? Because my Hosting Organization System and G, is having a successful collaboration with Europe Direct, and my activities are not framed only into a specific topic that my hosting organization is using as an aim, but also the work topics of Europe direct represents my activities.

So, regarding street actions, I had the chance to participate in one such event together with the local volunteers of Europe Direct. Our street action was dedicated for the International Day of the Elimination of Violence against Women that is celebrated on the 25th of November.

Why This International Day?

Violence against women is a human rights violation.
Violence against women is a consequence of discrimination against women, in law and also in practice, and of persisting inequalities between men and women.
Violence against women impacts on, and impedes, progress in many areas, including poverty eradication, combating HIV/AIDS, and peace and security.
Violence against women and girls is not inevitable. Prevention is possible and essential.
Violence against women continues to be a global pandemic.

One of the major challenges to efforts to prevent and end violence against women and girls worldwide is the substantial funding shortfall. As a result, resources for initiatives to prevent and end violence against women and girls are severely lacking. Frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals, which includes a specific target on ending violence against women and girls, offer huge promise, but must be adequately funded in order to bring real and significant changes in the lives of women and girls.

The event was held in the main square of the Komotini. For the event was prepared: few billboard, if photos that were representing the sign of violence, plus some draws with characters from famous cartoons with different posts. All the volunteers were interacting with the interested people who were having questions and offering informational support. There was also two tables from where visitors could take different brochures about the topic, and apart from that there was also a panel where people could leave there thoughts about that, the panel was full of the end with different notes from the visitors in many languages.

At the end of the day we could conclude that the event was a successful one as most of the brochures were shared, also from the photos we can see that many people showed their interest for this event, and also the panel was full of notes.

Me personally after this event I got inspired a lot, and for sure I will give my support from many other future events like that.