JOY! City of Joy Celebrates 17th Graduating Class, Graduating 1472 Women To Date
With gratitude to Christine Schuler Deschryver and the entire team in Bukavu, DRC!
The 17th Women’s Leadership Training Session at the City of Joy is a very special session. It is a session in which residents have not only been transformed by the ingredients of therapy and leadership but have also gained missionary knowledge. For six months, 89 residents of the City of Joy received training in psycho-therapeutic care that helped them heal their trauma caused by the atrocities they had survived.
The six months that these women spent with their sisters and mamas unfolded as the pandemic of Covid-19 killed hundreds of thousands around the world. 50% of the staff confined themselves with the residents at the City of Joy from 23 March 2020 onward to continue and complete the program. 89 women went to their villages as leaders and missionaries. They are leaders who will revolutionize the retrograde mentalities and practices that annihilate the development of women at all levels.
“We are proud of these leaders, who recovered their true potential. We are proud to have journeyed with a dedicated team to reach the expected results of the training and healing of 89 women despite the trying circumstances that the pandemic brought. We are thankful and really grateful to V (formerly Eve Ensler) and to V-Day, who trusted us and accepted our decision to continue our program while most of the NGOs in our area closed their doors and expats left the country. We are thankful to our donors and supporters. Let’s keep Raising the Vibration!” – Christine Schuler Deschryver, Co-Founder & Director City of Joy, Director V-Day Congo
Filmmakers Behind the Documentary ‘Woman’ Create Short About City of Joy to Celebrate Congo’s Independence Day
We are thrilled to share this new short from award-winning filmmakers Yann Arthus-Bertrand and Anastasia Mikova. Created to celebrate the independence day of the DRCongo, they have released a behind-the-scenes film of their shooting in Bukavu at City of Joy and Panzi Hospital featuring interviews with women including City of Joy Co-founder and Director Christine Schuler Deschryver.
TODAY (30 June) is the Last Day of our Fiscal Year. Support the work of V-Day, One Billion Rising & City of Joy
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This Friday, 19 June is Juneteenth – the 135th anniversary of the day the news of emancipation reached the last group of slaves in Texas, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1 January 1863. (Juneteenth is also know as Emancipation Day or Freedom Day).
Join V-Day, One Billion Rising and City of Joy as we RISE and proclaim Black Lives Matter this weekend of national days of action anchored by the Movement for Black Lives. Events are being scheduled throughout the United States in the streets and online.
While this day is sacred for Black Americans every year, this year it takes on added meaning against the backdrop of countless people taking to the streets across United States and the world to declare that BLACK LIVES MATTER in the wake of the senseless murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and the countless other Black men and women at the hands of the police. For far too many centuries, anti-Blackness has been the underpinning of how our society is structured. It is time to dismantle it.
As a movement of anti-violent activists, we know the intersections that race, gender, sexual orientation and violence make along the trajectory of a person’s life; just look at the experience of Black trans women, who are disproportionately murdered in our society.
We must meet this moment with everything we have. Now is the time to mobilize in a way we have never done before. We must show up for our Black brothers and sisters and stand in solidarity with them in the face of Trump’s glaring racism, to demand that police forces be defunded so that resources can be channeled to true community needs, from housing and education to mental health support.
Together let’s join the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL)’s SIXNINETEEN mobilization on Juneteenth weekend, 19-21 June. Take action from home, in your community, or in Washington, D.C. Visit sixnineteen.com for information on how you can be involved in this historic weekend of actions.
If you take to the streets, please wear a mask and practice social distancing as much as possible.
Let’s listen. Let’s donate. Let’s show up. Let’s love. Let’s not stop until ALL BLACK LIVES MATTER.
Let’s RISE!
See you in the streets and online,
V-Day, One Billion Rising & City of Joy
JUNETEENTH NOW – Get us Free – Friday, 19 June, 7-9pm ET
Join a jubilant and joyous, Black led, multicultural celebration of Juneteenth, featuring an array of artists including One Billion Rising/V-Day Founder V (formerly Eve Ensler) and Actor/Activist and V-Board Member Rosario Dawson.
“On #Juneteenth, an incredible group of artists will gather for a Black-led, multicultural celebration. An homage to the 400 years that Black people have lived in this nation, the program will non-linearly jump through our past and present, highlighting Black resistance, resilience, healing and joy… the evening will feature performances from a wide variety of artists… A variety of writers will speak… and the entertainment will be rounded out with jaw-dropping musical numbers from award-winning theatre stars… As our nation remains gripped in protests against police violence, this program will amplify calls for justice while simultaneously highlighting the joy, virtuosity and excellence that are too-often absent in media portrayals of Black culture. And – against the President’s white nationalism – the show will offer a vision of a beautiful, justice-oriented, multicultural America in striking contrast.” – Middlechurch
For full details, to view the lineup of incredible artists, writers and entertainment and to register, visit: bit.ly/get-us-free
The 17th Women’s Leadership Training Session at the City of Joy is a very special session. It is a session in which residents have not only been transformed by the ingredients of therapy and leadership but have also gained missionary knowledge.
For six months, 89 residents of the City of Joy received training in psycho-therapeutic care that helped them heal their trauma caused by the atrocities they had survived. Some arrived desperate, others angry. But from the beginning of their stay, they began to heal and cultivate a new life. By giving up everything that contributed to their imbalance, they were given a solid foundation of self-empowerment, independence, and resilience to rebuild their lives.
The six months that these women spent with their sisters and mamas unfolded as the pandemic of Covid-19 killed hundreds of thousands around the world. The City of Joy had its greatest victory in transforming the lives of 89 women who were resilient, courageous, optimistic and above all determined reach the end of the mission despite the turmoil that Covid-19 brought. The City of Joy has moved forward with 89 women who believe in success despite the threat of an invisible enemy in the region.
In the pursuit of its mission, the City of Joy has developed strategies that demonstrate boldness, risk-taking to succeed and perseverance. Its staff has proven its dedication during this period of the pandemic. To achieve the objectives, 50% of the staff confined themselves with the residents at the City of Joy from March 23, 2020 onward to continue and complete the program. The staff worked during the day and part of the night to: tell stories with the residents; help them draw their lifelines and build the pillars of their lives; practice meditation and contemplation techniques and communicate with Mother Earth; knit, crochet and concentrate on sewing; and to do the art of cooking and learn healthy eating techniques. The residents played a great responsibility in the achievement of the objectives; they took ownership of their training and organized the closing ceremony by working on the key message they wanted to convey in relation to the mission they have to accomplish in their respective communities.
Session 17 gave a double mission to its residents. 89 women went to their villages as leaders and missionaries. They are leaders who will revolutionize the retrograde mentalities and practices that annihilate the development of women at all levels. They are missionaries because of the Covid-19 pandemic. They join communities that do not believe in the existence of Covid-19. They join communities that are building myths around the pandemic. They are reaching out to communities that are not sensitized against Covid-19. These women have been equipped since the declaration of a state of emergency in the DRC after the first cases of Covid-19 had been reported to understand its mode of transmission and prevention. They are going to give back what they experienced during three months of lockdown at City of Joy. They will help their communities to practice preventive measures and to respect physical/social distancing. They have joined their communities with tools and knowledge to play the role of community liaison agents, sensitizers and coaches to contribute effectively to the efforts in the response against Covid-19 in view of the dazzling situation of the pandemic in DRC.
We are proud of these leaders, who recovered their true potential.
We are proud to have journeyed with a dedicated team to reach the expected results of the training and healing of 89 women despite the trying circumstances that the pandemic brought.
We are thankful and really grateful to V (Eve Ensler) and to V-Day, who trusted us and accepted our decision to continue our program while most of the NGOs in our area closed their doors and expats left the country.
“We are a society that has been structured from top to bottom by race. You don’t get beyond that by deciding not to talk about it anymore. It will always come back; it will always reassert itself over and over again.” – Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw
I was released from prison in October of 2018 and have been home now for a year and eight months. I remember counting the years and days of my confinement with a heavy heart, now I count my days of freedom with pleasure and gratitude. We measure time in many different ways but for me these are the most precious of times, not only because I am free, but because I am experiencing history for Black Americans in my own backyard.
The police killing of George Floyd combined with the Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the festering sore of indifference for the most marginalized groups of people in society. This legacy of slavery and white supremacy that America has perpetrated for far too long needs to be addressed and dismantled.
(Roz at the Justice for George Floyd protest at the Barclays Center, Brooklyn 29 May 2020, at Rage Rejoice Rise event at Middle Church 26 February 2019)
For the last several days and nights of protest, Americans are confronting the systemic racism in our country with a vengeance, we are coming out in numbers, strong and powerful. We are tired of the blatant injustices put upon black shoulders each and every day of our lives for centuries. We are tired of being left out of the conversations. We are tired of being portrayed as menacing, threatening, dangerous, lazy and no good. We are tired of our Black men and women being killed by the police. I mourn for George Perry Floyd, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice and all the other men and women whose lives were taken. I mourn for the known and unknown and not just about police brutality but for the racism that permeates our world and provides a platform for this injustice that dictates that it’s ok to murder Black people and their lives have less significance than whites.
I am saddened and outraged by our history of lynching/killing/executing black people, the knees of white racist America has been on our necks too long and change is in the making, justice has been denied for far too long. We have suffered with our children having the most inferior schools and educators, our neighborhoods are food deserts with liquor stores on every corner, our communities are without adequate resources available for mental and physical health care, we are discriminated against in housing and job opportunities and are unproportionally herded into the criminal justice system because of the color of our skin.
We are in dire times with a demagogue president who continues bombarding the media with deliberate seditious rhetoric, who campaigned against the Central Park Five in 1989, and was furious about Colin Kaepernick taking a knee to protest in silence. Who reportedly tweeted “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” the racially charged statement that dates back to the civil rights era and is known to have been invoked in 1967 by a white police chief Walter Headly during hearings about crime in Florida city.
“The challenge of the 21st century is not to demand equal opportunity in the machinery of oppression, but rather to identify and dismantle those structures in which racism continues to be embedded.” – Angela Davis
This pandemic spotlights the indifference towards the black population and the poor in our society who are dying at three times the rates of whites. The movement that is sweeping this country is one that has finally reached its time. This has been the perfect environment for change, with the pandemic that occurred and Floyd’s unnecessary death at the hands of police. Now is the time for change, now is the time for open discussion and now is the time to reimagine the world we want to live in. We can’t change what happened in the past, but we can determine what happens in our future. We can get this right!
In Solidarity,
Roslyn Smith
V-Day Beyond Incarceration Project Manager
SUPPORT black led grassroots groups, engage in racial justice work and system change. We encourage you to research who is doing the work in your immediate community, follow their lead on how you can best help, and use social media to amplify and support.
While thousands across the world condemn racism and demand justice at global Black Lives Matter protests, City of Joy is mourning and rising against racism. The City of Joy community is revolted over the police killing of George Floyd and others and condemns both racism and police brutality. We demand justice for those whose lives have been sabotaged after Floyd was laid on the ground and handcuffed with his neck pinned under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer. This is pure racism! This is injustice! City of Joy is kneeling in solidarity with all protesters across the planet amid the COVID-19 pandemic response.
King Leopold II statues abound today in Belgium despite his folly of grandeur. protesters are tired of racism and have removed one in Antwerp after anti-racism protests. Today, City of Joy stands in solidarity with these protesters. We denounce King Leopold II’s brutal rule in Belgium’s African colonies, most notably in the Democratic Republic of the Congo during which millions were brutally killed.
We will not forget Belgian Prime Minister Charles Miche’s speech of 4 April 2019, apologizing for the country’s actions toward mixed-race children in DR. We denounce the kidnapping, segregation, deportation and forced adoption of more than twenty thousands children born to mixed-race couples during Belgian colonial rule in Burundi, Congo and Rwanda. While we remember the Belgian’s apology and recognition of responsibility for the immense harm inflicted on our nations, which they colonized for eight decades; the apology is one step towards raising awareness and recognition of the tragic history of their colonialism. We demand that Belgium remove all statues of King Leopold II, whose violent, exploitative policies in the Congo were used to enrich Belgium.
We are offspring of those who went through colonialism. We are Congolese women who have been kidnapped, tortured and raped. We have been through so much. We are offspring of those who went through colonialism. We are Congolese women who have been kidnapped, tortured and raped. We have been through so much. We stand and RISE IN SOLIDARITY with the protesters!
The 17th Women’s Leadership Training Session at the City of Joy is a very special session. It is a session in which residents have not only been transformed by the ingredients of therapy and leadership but have also gained missionary knowledge. For six months, 89 residents of the City of Joy received training in psycho-therapeutic care that helped them heal their trauma caused by the atrocities they had survived.
