Comments

Teaching girls that they CAN defend themselves

I am interested in becoming a certified trainer for Just Yell Fire. I gained my Master's degree in Library Science last May with an emphasis in children's and youth services, and hope to find a job soon as a public librarian. With the amount of contact I will have in that field with young and teenage girls, as well as contacts with schools and other libraries, I would like to find out how to become involved and help promote your program.

I have been training in aikido as a self-defense art since June, and will be testing for my first rank soon. The more I learned in aikido, the more it made me aware of how girls and women in America are socialized about violence. Movies, television, and popular media seem to promote the belief that girls and women cannot win or escape in a situation where we are under attack by a man. Recognizing this made me interested in finding out what programs were already available to promote girls' and women's self-defense. I discovered Just Yell Fire by Googling "women's self-defense". I was thrilled to find that someone has begun a movement to counter that socialization early in women's lives, beginning with teaching the girls who are most at risk that they CAN defend themselves and escape an attacker, even if their attacker is much larger. I myself am only 5'1", and the techniques that eliminate an attacker's advantage of greater height are also especially applicable to me.

I live in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, and I would like any information available on training for certification for Just Yell Fire, either locally or in neighboring states if necessary. Many thanks to you, Dallas, and everyone else involved with Just Yell Fire for your caring and hard work.

Shirley and I have both seen this video and feel it is one of the brightest productions that every woman of any age should watch and learn from!

I watched 'Just Yell Fire', and told my form tutor at school about it. It's now going to be shown to everyone in the school, and hopefully they will show their friends at other schools as well. I just wanted to say thank you to everyone involved in the program for creating it; I know several people who have been in similar situations to those shown on the video, and they appreciate so much that something is finally being done to raise awareness of it, so that others will not be so unfortunate.

First, let me congratulate the endeavors of these teenagers in doing such a great service to mankind. What a creative way of getting the message out! I am doing a basic life-skills class and want to incorporate this DVD in one of our lessons. Thank you for making a difference.

While working out at the gym today, I saw your organization's segment on the Montel Williams show. On the TV next to the one showing your segment was a news report on Fox News showing an 18 year old girl that was just abducted from a Target in KS. My daughter was working out at the gym with me. I would like to request one of your DVD's for her. I want her to have the information that she needs to help her know what to do if she ever finds herself in that kind of situation.

I have been telling all of my daughter's mothers about the DVD and download. Thanks for getting the word out. Our young women need to know what to do in the real world and we as parents need to be reminded as well. I am so proud of the young women who were moved to make this DVD. It may very well save more lives than we will ever know.

My faith in humanity is restored once again. Stay pro-active girls.

I am the mother of 2 (1 girl, 1 boy) and I just saw the Montel Williams show & learned about your movie. I was moved to tears. You should be very proud of yourselves! You are great examples of the kind of young people we need in the world today, if there were more people like you the world would be a better place and your movie might not be so necessary, but unfortunately it is. You are an inspiration to people of all ages and are providing a life saving service. God Bless You!!!

I am a junior at Gettysburg College in PA. I don't know if you have been watching the news lately, but there has been a murder on our college campus last Thursday. One student (a male senior) strangled and murdered his (ex-)girlfriend of one year (a sophomore). It really shook our campus hard, along with myself, even though i did not know either one that was involved. After breaking down a little tonight, i realized, crying was not going to change the past; nor prevent incidents, assaults, nor murders like this from happening again in the future.
What will? Taking action!
I found your contact information after googling 'self defense for women classes' and wanted to get in contact with you right away. I was hoping you could hold self defense classes for female students, or any woman (faculty, staff or students) on our campus to help protect us if we were to ever get ourselves in this type of situation. It is very scary to know that an innocent 19 year old young woman was strangled, stabbed and murdered by someone that loved her for a year. Not even a stranger, or a crazy drug addict rapist on the street! Her boyfriend! Someone she trusted and loved! How scary is that? She was not able to get away, she was not able to defend herself. She died because of that.
But you... you have the power to give us woman that power. You have the ability to give us woman the ability to defend ourselves. To win. To live. And to help with our recovery of her death on our campus. I believe that immediately holding these self defense classes on our campus will prove that Emily Rachel Silverstein did not die in vain.
Please help me, help us. Give us the power, the ability to defend ourselves and live.

You would have been so proud of Dallas today. She stood up in front of our 400 students with the greatest poise and composure. She drew them in from the start and had them laughing and listening at the same time. I shared the DVD with a girls school in Memphis.

Thank you for your help in connecting us with Dallas.

As a former Police Officer and having approximately twelve years in security and law enforcement; I applaud your organizations efforts to teach girls and young women how to defend themselves against predators.