Marching for Million Women Rise in Manchester

By Skye Sandhu

An empowered and energised bunch of women all met up at Stratford, London early one October Sunday morning to travel up to Manchester for the first Manchester Million Women Rise march.

Despite only having one toilet break on the way up there, we were all surprisingly still eager and at full steam to get moving with sisters in the North. We got there in fantastic time (thanks to our driver) to hand out all the banners to the hundreds of women and children gathered in the Castlefield Arena, in the city centre.

Weather was on our side, without a cloud in sight, off we all marched. It was great to see women joining in with us as we passed the streets and the applause from the public watching us as our procession passed.

The day was enriched with warm speeches, singing, chanting, applause, laughter and a strong feeling of uprising and empowerment (not forgetting good food provided by volunteers).

En route back to London if you heard singing amidst the service station loos by Wolverhampton that would have been us - bringing the energy up and down the country all in the aid to end all forms of male violence!

Happy International Women's Day (or Weekend)!

It's that time of year again, when (some) of the world's attention turns to women. There are loads of actions, events and celebrations going on. Here are just a few things you can do:

* MARCH! Million Women Rise - thousands of women will march through central London tomorrow in an act of solidarity and protest against male violence against women.

* CELEBRATE! Take some time to think about the women who have inspired and encouraged you in your life. When you've done that, why not let them know? Give them a call, bake them a cake, write it on your blog or Facebook page, shout it from the rooftops - whatever will make them feel valued. You could even make a donation in her honour to your favourite women's organisation - Rosa (the UK women's fund) lets you dedicate a donation to a special woman in your life by giving her a special rose in Rosa's online garden.

* CAMPAIGN! Lobby your local council for better provision for women who have experienced violence. Go to www.mapofgaps.org and use the template email there.

At 1.10pm today, hundreds of people changed their Facebook statuses and twittered messages about violence against women in Britain, after AmnestyUK sent out a call to action. You can see the Twitter messages here.