Nottingham turns orange against gender-based violence

In the UK, two women a week are killed by a current or former partner.

Nottingham Soroptimist Club is an organisation running for more than 85 years in a bid to improve the lives of women and girls in the Nottingham area.

Along with other Soroptimist organisations across the globe, the club has been taking part in the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence 2021.

This takes place annually from November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, to December 10, Human Rights Day.

“We aim to break the silence and speak for those women who cannot speak for themselves.”

–Soroptimists International, Nottingham

The theme for this year’s 16 Days of Activism is ‘Orange the World: End violence against women now’ where cities and towns across the world will do whatever they can to make their home shine orange as the colour symbolises hope for a brighter future.

Margaret Oldroyd, Soroptimist International Nottingham’s secretary, said: “We are using the #OrangeNottingham campaign to raise public awareness of domestic violence and to highlight that women are being abused and killed all over the UK, including here in Nottingham.

“We aim to break the silence and speak for those women who cannot speak for themselves.”

On the first day of the campaign, Nottingham Soroptimists certainly made sure the city glared orange by wrapping bright orange scarves around the infamous lions outside Nottingham’s Council House.

The organisation handed out knitted orange poppies and information leaflets to passers-by whilst speeches where given from the organisation’s representatives and Nottingham figureheads, including Sheriff Merlita Bryan.

In addition, many of Nottingham’s buildings lit up orange on the night of November 25 including Portland University Building, County Hall, Council House, and Greens Windmill showing support for the Soroptimist Club and their fight against gender-based violence.

The sense of community this campaign has brought to Nottingham can be seen through the endless support from the city’s local businesses, one of these being Shop Zero.

Staff can be seen walking round the shop wearing orange poppies pinned to their aprons, something owner and founder of Shop Zero, Sarah Maloy, feels very passionate about.

When asked why she wanted to get involved in the campaign, Sarah explained: “This is such an important issue, especially during lockdown, violence against women in the home increased significantly.

Gender-based violence is a lot more prevalent in society than we think, but it is not brought into the public consciousness as much as we need it to be.”

Sarah also explained that by wearing the poppies around her shop it gave people the chance to ask questions about the campaign and encourage them to get involved with the 16 days of activism.

The Nottingham Soroptimists’ social media pages will be highlighting other aspects of gender-based violence throughout the campaign, encouraging people to “help by speaking up when you hear words or see acts which are wrong”.

With the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence 2021 campaign ending on December 10 there is still plenty of time for you to get involved if you have not already and you can visit the Nottingham Soroptimists Facebook page or their website at: https://sigbi.org/nottingham/ to find out more.