PHILADELPHIA –- A Symposium on Violence Against Women will be held  Friday, Sept. 28, at 10 a.m.  Sponsored by the Evelyn Jacobs Ortner Center on Family Violence at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice, the event will be in the South American Room at International House, 3701 Chestnut St. 

Jimmie Briggs, executive director and co-founder of The Man-Up Campaign, a global initiative to stop violence against girls and women through the arts, sports and technology, will deliver the keynote address, “Doing What Matters: From Tragedy and Trauma to Social Change.”

As a journalist, Briggs documented the rapes by soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the culture that allows such sexual assaults to occur.

Launched in July 2010 at the World Cup in Johannesburg, South Africa, Man-Up encourages people aged 13-30 to design and implement community-based projects.

In addition, the Ortner Center’s affiliates will present highlights of their current research in panel discussions on Philadelphia’s systems for victims of abuse and assault; knowing a victim or perpetrator: differences among college students; a banner campaign marketing consent; developing HIV and partner abuse prevention for urban adolescent girls; intimate partner violence against women veterans; injury detection in forensic sexual assault exams; domestic violence and sexual assault agencies’ websites and online communication strategies; strangulation of intimate partners; and Iraqi women’s attitudes about wife beating.

Other groups participating in the panel discussions will be the School of Arts and Sciences, Annenberg School for Communication, Perelman School of Medicine, School of Nursing and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Additional information is available at  http://www.sp2.upenn.edu/ortner/learning/index.html.

The lecture is free and open to the public, but advance registration is required at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?fromEmail=true&formkey=dDdTOUw3RC1zdWl4Z2ZRaUdRMU5ZNEE6MQ.