Genital Integrity Awareness Week, March 29-april 4

Here are some ideas for ways to raise awareness this week:

Genital Integrity Awareness Week
March 29th - April 4th, 2006

There are many ways to raise awareness for this issue. Here are a few that people have used, or plan to use. Use any you feel works for you or your group. Or perhaps these will inspire you to create other ways to get people thinking and talking about Genital Integrity.

-Broadcast the NOCIRC public service announcement on cable television
-Invite people to a discussion lunch, coffee, or tea
-Mail postcards of your design or placards you have seen
-Mail postcards to expectant parents, find birth announcements in yournewspaper
-Take reprints of important articles to doctors and legislators
-Donate books on genital integrity to your libary, mark them 'for permanent collection'
-Participate in a march or demonstration
-Recruit celebrities and VIPs to speak on the subject
-Sponsor some activity, such as a dance, to raise awareness and raise funds
-Offer to speak on a genital integrity subject at a church or local civicgroup
-Demonstrate in front of a hospital or clinic
-Write a letter, better yet, write a dozen letters to editors
-Place an ad in a childbirth magazine
-Table at a college
-Poster university campuses and publice bulletin boards
-Speak on talk-radio shows or NPR
-Talk with your legislator about the issue
-Put a bumper sticker on your car
-Drop off pamphlets and brochures at public information locations and civic centers
-Write a letter to local family physicians, obstetricians, and pediatricians, and include some pamphlets
-Sponsor a billboard
-Balloon release
-Handout bumperstickers and buttons to teens
-Sponsor a bus tour, carvan, walk, run, or bicycle event
-Donate blood in trust for genital mutilatlion victims
-Write an op/ed article for a newspaper
-Chalk sidewalks with genital integrity messages and slogans
-Write and sing songs about genital integrity
-Use humor to raise awareness, tell jokes
-Write a play about genital integrity
-Speak at gender studies classrooms on genital integrity
-Rent an advertising medium like a park bench, bus, etc.
-Show a genital integrity film at the library or civic theatre
-Put genital integrity messages on your checks, envelopes, custom stamps,etc.
-Contact, speak to, and coordinate with like-minded groups
-Talk at a library

SAMPLE LETTER TO THE EDITOR
(the shorter the better, more likely to get published)

Dear Editor,

March 29th - April 4th, 2006 is Genital Integrity Awareness Week - a time for all of us in America to reflect on the rights of all children, both male and female, to genital integrity. While girls currently have legal protection from circumcision in the US, boys have no such protection. More and more adult males are angry and upset that part of their body was removed without their consent, and for no medical necessity. It is time for all Americans to take a closer look at the practice of male circumcision - and to ask "Does being born a healthy male require surgical correction?"

More info & ideas at: http://www.genitalintegrity.net

Printable literature can be found:

Printables:

http://www.nocirc.org/publish/

http://www.luckystiff.org/

http://www.coloradonocirc.org/pamphlets.php

http://www.catholicsagainstcircumcis...c_download.htm

http://www.circumstitions.com/ (Printables are located in grey boxes.)

HTHs!

Jen

PS. Genital Integrity Awareness Week banners and intactivist blinkies are available here: http://www.geocities.com/sunflower_m.../blinkies.html . If site becomes unavailable because of exceeding bandwidth, please check back later.