Dear friends: Finally, on 10th February in Madison Square Garden (New York), the Meeting to End Violence Against Women organized by the V-Day movement took place!  During the morning and the afternoon, the 60 finalists each had 3 minutes to present their proposals to an audience of women activists and the 12 regional coordinators who composed the panel of Judges chosen to award 3 of these proposals with funding for their action plans. The proposals selected were presented by Silke Pillinger (Germany), Jennifer Jadwero (Kenya) and Regine Bandler (Brazil), which, as Latin Americans, obviously makes us very happy and keen to send our warm congratulations to our compañeras in the group "Loucas de Pedra Lilás" (the Crazy Lilacs) from Recife. The event in Madison Square ended with a show to a full house (20,000 people) in which the "Monologues of the Vagina" by Eve Ensler (also one of the original promotors of V-Day) were represented and which had the participation of Jane Fonda, Glenn Close, Brooke Shields, Oprah Winfrey, Rosie Perez, Juliana Margulis, Calista Flockhart, amongst other artists. They all donated their work, as did the Trade Union of Madison Square Garden. The show had perfect production: everything, absolutely everything, was done by women, from the lights to the camera direction and sound. We don't know exactly how much was raised, but we do know that Jane Fonda donated 1 million dollars, and the sale of entrance tickets, T-shirts, hats and other donated items, may have produced another million.  Eve Ensler, from Equality Now, and the regional coordinators who supported the V-DAY initiative promoting the " Contest: Stop Rape ", are now evaluating what has been achieved and studying proposals and alternatives for the future. Certainly one of the next tasks will be to publicize the 60 plans that reached the finals. Again, I would like to thank Susana Chiarotti and Isabel Duque for joining me in building the team which selected the South American finalists; all the colleagues who presented their proposals to the contest and demonstrated once again al the creativity and energy that our region is capable of; and the journalists and communicators of all the papers, bulletins and radio programs that have so helped to publicize this event. Lucy Garrido
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