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Embry-Riddle Film Presentation Benefits Children’s Home Society of Florida

Daytona Beach, Fla., Feb. 25, 2009 -- As part of the national V-Day College Campaign to raise awareness and funds for organizations working to end violence against women and girls, Embry-Riddle plans a V-Day benefit screening of “What I Want My Words to Do to You: Daytona Beach.”

This documentary film lays bare the hearts and minds of 15 female inmates of New York’s Bedford Hills Correctional Facility participating in a writing workshop led by playwright and activist Eve Ensler.

The women use writing exercises and discussions to examine how the cycle of violence and abuse in their childhoods led to their life of crime and to explore the nature of their crimes and the extent of their own culpability. The film culminates in an emotionally charged prison performance of the women’s writing, titled “Any One of Us,” by acclaimed actors Mary Alice, Glenn Close, Hazelle Goodman, Rosie Perez, and Marisa Tomei.

The film reveals both the wrenching personal journeys undertaken by the inmates to find the words that tell their stories and the power of those words to move the outside world. If the film has its intended effect, it will encourage other young women to end abuse in their lives for their own benefit and that of their children, who are otherwise destined to repeat the cycle.

“What I Want My Words to Do to You” will be shown two times, Tuesday, March 3, and Wednesday, March 4, at 7 p.m. in the Willie Miller Instructional Center auditorium on Embry-Riddle’s Daytona Beach campus, 600 S. Clyde Morris Blvd. General admission is $5; admission is $3 for Embry-Riddle faculty, staff, and students with Eagle Card.

The Children’s Home Society of Florida, one of the state’s oldest private not-for-profit organizations providing services to children and families, will receive the proceeds of the event.

The film is presented by the Riddle Players Theatre Company, led by student Anastasia Taylor, and funded with a mini-grant from the University Office of Diversity Initiatives, which is also sponsoring the event. For more information, contact Taylor at anastasia.taylor@erau.edu.

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the world’s largest, fully accredited university specializing in aviation and aerospace, offers more than 30 degree programs in its colleges of Arts and Sciences, Aviation, Business, and Engineering, educating more than 34,000 students annually in undergraduate and graduate programs. Doctoral programs in aviation and in engineering physics are pending approval by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) for the University to offer programs at the doctoral level. Embry-Riddle educates students at residential campuses in Prescott, Ariz., and Daytona Beach, Fla., through the Worldwide Campus at more than 130 campus centers in the United States, Europe, Canada, and the Middle East, and through online learning. For more information, visit www.embryriddle.edu.