‘One Million Thumbprints’ raise awareness in Bend
How do you raise awareness for a cause as big as violence against women in war zones? One way is as small as a thumbprint. One Million Thumbprints is a peace program working to end gender-based violence in areas of conflict.
Founder Belinda Bauman was in Bend on Sunday, collecting thumbprints and sharing the story of a very brave woman.
“My story starts with a thumbprint,” Bauman said. “I met a woman named Esperance in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”.
This was in 2012, in a time and location Bauman calls the “world’s worst place to be a woman and a mother.”
Esperance shared her story with Bauman. She and her family fled their village, hoping to settle somewhere new.
“She was driven out to the forest to collect firewood, and it was in that vulnerable place, she and her husband experienced the violence that the rebel militias that were over running Congo at the time, brought upon them,” Bauman said.
“They killed her husband, her children were scattered, and they inflicted a violence that was so deep upon her that she was unable to move for three days.”
Esperance was raped and beaten so badly, she said she would have died if her sisters hadn’t found her.
About two weeks after hearing her story, Bauman received something in the mail. Without being able to read or write, Esperance had sent a message.
“When she shared that story with me everything inside of me wanted to lean away.,
Bauman recalled.
“It was a blank piece of paper, and across that piece of paper she had stamped her thumbprint, and in that thumbprint, she was giving her permission to tell her story. Underneath, she had someone else write, ‘Tell my story to the world,'” she recounted.
That thumbprint sparked a desire far Bauman to place her own next to it, in an act of solidarity.
Now, prints are collected from all over the world to raise awareness of gender-based violence toward women in war zones.
On March 8, they hope to get even more attention for the cause, when they take their collection to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro.
To leave a thumbprint, or get more information visit onemillionthumbprints.org.
