On Sunday, January 25 at 4 pm the senior class of the Department of Theatre Arts will present the 4th Annual Wheels4Women Benefit Cabaret. The cabaret will last about 75 minutes with an intermission and will feature music and poetry performed by senior BFA performance majors. There will also be a raffle for professional theatre tickets (the Hangar, the Kitchen, the Merry-Go-Round), a 5-show pass to Cinemapolis, and an auction for a home made pie! Suggested donation is 10.00 per adult and 5.00 for students. The cabaret will take place in the Clark Theatre, Dillingham Center. All donations are tax deductible and checks should be made out to Ithaca College with “Wheels4Women” in the memo.
Wheels4Women works in partnership with the Sakhi Shelter for victims of domestic violence in Kerala, India to provide shelter residents and community members with the training necessary to become licensed auto rickshaw drivers (like taxi drivers in the U.S.). Through this training, abused women and victims of the sex trade gain the job skills needed to work towards financial independence and away from their abusers.
In 2010 Professor Kathleen Mulligan traveled to Kerala, India as a Fulbright scholar with her project “Finding Women’s Voices”, which focused on the empowerment of women through voice. One night she was invited to teach her workshop at the Sakhi Shelter for victims of domestic violence. At the end of the evening, Kathleen’s husband David Studwell asked the director of the shelter what they needed more than anything. “We need a vehicle”, she said. “We need a way to rescue desperate women in the middle of the night”. Out of that conversation Wheels4Women was born. The following summer, Kathleen and David produced a benefit cabaret in Holland, MI and raised the money to purchase a new auto-rickshaw for the shelter. Since that summer they have produced four more Wheels4Women cabarets with senior BFA Performance majors at Ithaca College. The money raised from these cabarets has purchased an additional auto rickshaw for the shelter and trained thirteen shelter residents as licensed auto rickshaw drivers.
As Beena Sebastian, the director of the shelter says: “Female auto rickshaw drivers are rare in India, but we are starting a revolution!”
Check out our website at wheels4women.org.
Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact Bill Langan at wlangan@ithaca.edu. We ask that requests for accommodations be made as soon as possible.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20150119063317440