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Shreen Abdul Saroor, Sohini Chakraborty, Vuslat Dogan Sabanci, and Betty Makoni all have something in common: they are all reaching into and empowering communities to speak out against violence towards women.  Last week's Washington Post profiled the activists as they reflected on women and young girls they’ve encountered with little legal protection against the sexual and other violence they face in their countries. All of this comes in light of the International Violence Against Women Act, which awaits passage in Washington. The bill, modeled after an act protecting women in the U.S., would hold offenders accountable to more than just community organizers like Shreen.

Shreen, a 2005 Echoing Green Fellow, began the Model Resettlement Project to relocate displaced Muslim and Tamil families like her own back into their home communities in Sri Lanka. But the group has had to focus on more than relocation alone, as domestic violence and a culture of silence leave many female residents vulnerable. Shreen recalls organizing nighttime vigils outside of the homes of women whose husbands returned from work violent and likely to lash out against their spouses. She says, “the issue stopped being private and became public.” In the absence of formal protection, however, Shreen puts her own life at risk, as a woman speaking for those who’ve been silenced, but without her voice one can only imagine the morbid quiet that would be heard.