More than 2,000 students and faculty members of St. Scholastica’s College in Manila joined this year’s One Billion Rising, a global campaign calling for an end to all forms of violence against women and children.

A yearly event at St. Scholastica’s College starting in 2013, this year’s participants danced and made a “number one” gesture, urging women not to be willing victims.

“It’s called One Billion Rising because thousands of women will stand up and will say that the violence against women and children must be stopped,” Becky Marquez, a professor in the Women Studies Department at St. Scholastica’s and one of the main organizers from the school, told this reporter in a phone interview.

“So, by 14 February, various groups from other parts of the world would have danced that dance because it’s a position against violence against women and children,” she said.

She said that oftentimes other St. Scholastica’s College campuses in Pampanga, Legazpi City, and Bacolod City held this event on 8 March during International Women’s Day.