Womanity Award Winner Luchadoras Launches Campaign Against Online Violence

MEXICO CITY, February 14, 2019 (Newswire.com) - A group of women empowerment organizations has launched a campaign to raise awareness for online violence and its impact on those that experience it.

Luchadoras, La Sandía Digital and Association for Progressive Communications, with support from the Womanity Foundation, launched the campaign with a live event in Mexico City on Jan. 24, the International Day of Education, and was broadcasted across various social networks.

The campaign called La Clika works as a series of online animations, following Leos, a young girl whose sexual images are dispersed online after she and her partner break up. Throughout the series, Leos overcomes obstacles, finding support and friends along the way. Her story will be a tool for women living with online violence, especially focused on those between the ages of 16 and 24.

The campaign focuses on 3 key messages:

    •Awareness: Recognizing that online violence is a form of violence, its impact is real, and it happens more often than we may think.

    •Victim Blaming: It is never the victim’s fault. We need to combat the blame on women’s sexual expression. In the case of Leos, taking photographs doesn’t mean she gave consent for them to be shared publicly.

    •Standing Together: Both women and men should stand in solidarity with the victims of online violence.

La Clika offers materials and resources aimed to point female victims of online violence toward help and support. The materials include information about local laws, making yourself safe online, online consent, maintaining your freedom of expression online, etc.

In the past, Luchadoras, La Sandia Digital and APC have held workshops with victims of violence to document the local experiences and needs of women facing online violence in Mexico. The idea for Leos and this online violence campaign stemmed from those workshops and the real experiences of victims.

“Women have the right to stay free and safe online, and to enjoy the creative and transformative potential of the Internet. Online violence is denying opportunities for women to fully exercise their rights,” said Lulu V. Barrera, Founder of Luchadoras. “Solutions should not blame the victims or restrict our freedoms.”

La Clika is a result of funding and support from the Womanity Award, which Luchadoras, La Sandia Digital and APC received from the Womanity Foundation in 2016 for their innovative approach to tackling online violence.

“It’s fantastic to see the results of organizations that learn from one another, adapt and contextualize successful programs and find creative ways to respond to global problems such as online violence. This is what the Womanity Award is all about,” said Rafia Qureshi, Executive Director of The Womanity Foundation.

As Jan. 24 is also the International Day of Education, Luchadoras, La Sandia Digital and The Womanity Foundation hope the public will be open to learning about the severity of and solutions to online violence.

Quotes and images available on request.

About Luchadoras

Luchadoras is a collective feminist that imagines a world where women, young people and girls live with joy and freedom, in both physical and digital spaces, aware of their strength and personal and collective potential.

About La Sandía Digital

Sandia Digital is a team of women filmmakers committed to gender, cultural and environmental issues and human rights through participatory methodologies. They produce video documentaries, radio and video spots to support social movement advocacy.

About The Womanity Foundation

Womanity was established in 2005 by Yann Borgstedt. The Foundation believes in a world where all women and men enjoy equal and full social, economic and political rights. Womanity works closely with local experts to run its own programs, always checking that they are adding value to the sector. Womanity’s empowerment work falls into two pillars of activity - Institutional Development and Disruptive Media Solutions. Womanity provides support that is multi-year, highly-engaged and tailored. This means we take the time to understand the needs on the ground and find ways to uncover and develop catalytic solutions.

About the Womanity Award

The Womanity Award is a unique program that unsurfaces innovative solutions that address the root causes of violence against women and fosters partnership between organizations around the world to scale those solutions. Award recipients are given funding, mentoring and technical expertise so that their ground-breaking projects that are successful in one or more locations, can be adapted to a new geography.

A rigorous selection process is conducted to identify Womanity Award recipients. Applicants apply in pairs. The “Innovation Partner,” an organization that has already developed a successful program, applies with a “Scale-Up Partner” to contextualize, adapt and roll out the approach in a new location.

An Award is given every 2 years, with Awardees working together in partnership for over 3 years. An independent expert panel is used to select the pair of organizations awarded.

Contact

For more information please contact:

Angie Windle
[email protected]

Source: The Womanity Foundation