Mayor Pam O'Connor Declares Santa Monica Safe City for Women

Mayor Pam O’Connor will declare Jan. 11 as UN Global Safe City Day in Santa Monica and ask citizens to join and help make the city safer, more accountable and equitable for women and girls.

This proclamation is to educate the public about violence against women and girls and to encourage all citizens of Santa Monica to create safer public spaces. This will occur at the Annual General Assembly to launch the LA Safe Cities program held by the Los Angeles Chapter of the USNC for UN Women.

The assembly will take place from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. at the SGI Culture of Peace Resource Center, 606 Wilshire Blvd.

This dynamic and interactive event will include participatory circle discussions and a panel amongst a diverse audience of youth, activists and academics. Speakers will include; Ian Mcgrath (President of SGI), Kaz Brecher (Founder and Chief Curious Catalyst, Curious Catalyst, Inc.), Kathryn Travers (Director of Programmes for WICI), Eric V. Ibarra (Las Fotos Project), Lt. Andrea Grossman, Rohida Khan, Jordan Howard and many more. The conversation will focus on how our community can work together to reduce gender violence and to promote a non-violent Los Angeles. We are delighted to have experts in the following fields; environment and health, media and cyberspace, and exploitation.

As part of the global UN Women Safe Cities initiative, Safe Cities LA will lay the groundwork on how to make Los Angeles a global safe city. In 2010, UN Women partnered up with UNICEF, UN-Habitat and 50 other global and local organizations to launch the “Safe Cities Free of Violence against Women and Girls” initiative, which aims to engage women and girls to create safer cities for themselves.

Please visit http://la4unwomen.com/ for more information on speakers, circle leaders and the performance.