Gwangju International Center

SPEAKERS: Ynell Lumantao & Dana Han & My House

CO-WRITERS:​ Keonhee and Vivian

GIC TALK DATE: April 2, 2016

GIC TALK TITLE: The Vagina Monologues 2016

We are very honored to have three speakers with us today to talk about Women. Ynell Lumantao, Dana Han and a speaker from My House.

The first speaker, Ynell Lumantao, introduced the award-winning play The Vagina Monologues, which leads to the topic of the organization of the V-Day movement. She explained that the Vagina Monologues was created by Eve Ensler in 1998, and was based on interviews with 200 women about their views on sex, relationships, and violence against women. She then introduced its development from 2010 to 2015. She stated that the Vagina Monologues got bigger in 2013 and that men started to join in 2015. She specially emphasized that all the money raised by the Vagina Monologues were donated to My-House, an organization which helps the women who need help, like single mother. Lastly, she explained what is violence and highlighted the fact that there are many women suffering from it every day and every year.

The second speaker who is part of My House, talked in more detail about the charity-My House. Firstly, she explained us why they chose this name as it is very amicable. My-House is here to help single mothers who have lost their family’s support and for who it is hard to raise their kids by themselves. Then, she stated that My House not only offer a comfortable environment but also teaches them some new skills and provide jobs for them. Lastly, she expressed appreciation to her family, friends and all the people who offered support for her work and call for always more and more people to get involved in this charity.

The last speaker, Dana Han, also introduced the great harm to women caused by violence. “The women under the violence are in more dangerous situations than soldiers,” so we can’t ignore it anymore. She showed us a video to tell us, “Run like a girl” shouldn’t be a sneer. Lastly, Dana told us how we can we get involved in My House and the ways to help those women. She welcomed people to watch the play- The Vagina Monologues 2016.

To sum up, it was a really nice GIC Talk and all of the audience members were deeply shocked, as the speakers exposed the serious issues that we could have ignored before. We hope that more and more people will realize this issue and give warm support for those women.