This skit is easy to stage and engages any audience. It shows what a difference a friend, a parent, a child, a professional, or a community can make, and contrasts victim-blaming with empowerment. Maya’s story raises awareness about domestic violence, victim-blaming by family and community members, the difference support can make, women’s experiences of oppression and liberation, harms that everyone suffers, and empowerment.
“One of the audience member said that she no longer feels ‘suffocated’…because now she can breathe.” (Minessota)
Blanketed By Blame has been used in Alabama, Arizona, Bangladesh, California, Hawai’i, Lebanon, Minnesota, Ohio, Palestine, Texas, Wisconsin. We grant permission to adapt the text, change characters, names, translate the skits, etc. Please fully credit API-GBV and send us a copy of the adapted version.
Dramatization by the Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence
Based on an exercise developed by Ellen Pence
Credited to the Deluth Project and Ellen Pence
Adapted by Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-based Violence
Related Resources
The Community Engagement Continuum: Outreach, Mobilization, Organizing and Accountability to Address Violence against Women in Asian and Pacific Islander Communities
Community-based approaches to transform relations of power.
Community Engagement Curriculum Guide
Impact and strategies of community organizing in the anti-domestic violence movement.
Innovative Strategies to Address Domestic Violence in Asian and Pacific Islander Communities: Examining Themes, Models and Interventions, 2010
Examining the work done by API domestic violence advocates, their success, shortcomings, and future.
Framing Batterer Accountability in the Context of Our Work as Advocates: Issues & Questions, 2006
This report raises practical questions regarding batterer accountability, taking the view of the victim and community well-being into account
Dramatization
by API-GBV