Reese Witherspoon and Avon Team with the UN to Fight Violence Against Women

Apparently, it’s celebrity endorsement week at the United Nations. Yesterday, we learned that Drew Barrymore is donating $1 million to the World Food Program. Today, Reese Witherspoon is getting in on the action. She and Avon are partnering with the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women. From the UN News Center.

Academy Award-winning actress Reese Witherspoon and cosmetics giant Avon have agreed to lend their voices to United Nations-led efforts to stamp out violence against women as part of a public-private partnership announced today.

Avon is committing $1 million to the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women, which was created by the General Assembly in 1996 and is administered by the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). Avon’s donation will be the largest corporate grant ever made in a single year to the Trust Fund.

“Violence against women is the hidden pandemic,” UNIFEM’s acting Executive Director Joanne Sandler said at a press briefing in New York today.

But she also stressed that “violence is a problem with solutions,” welcoming Avon’s donation as a means to bolster the work of the Trust Fund, which has disbursed $18 million to 250 innovative programmes in more than 100 countries in the past decade.

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