On 27th April 2013, SI Middlesbrough hosted a conference for a morning on “Violence against Women and Girls – Everything you should know”. Speakers included Becky Rogerson for My Sister’s Place (a specialist domestic violence service based locally) who offered an alarming range of statistics: one in four of women suffer from domestic violence in their lifetime. Peter Widlinski from North Eastern Refugee Service aired some of the issues around trafficking in our region and the work of Barnardo’s. Our own SI member Margaret Clark reported on her role as an SIGBI delegate to the United Nations CSW57 Conference on Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) in New York, March 2013 urging everyone to stop the violence and ‘ACT NOW- the time is right’; also, SI Middlesbrough’s Susan Mansaray spoke movingly with a colleague, Eniola Jaiyeoba, on and against FGM. Rosy Burgess spoke up for