Final Dare to Challenge Project: Report Reach — The Impacters

Primary author: Lilla Dóra Mező

Co-curators: Valentine Castella, Clémence Hamard, Raluca-Ioana Stănciulescu, Mucsi Blanka

The Impacters is a Non-Fundamental Organisation that fights against violence against women. To reach our audience we need viable (business), feasible (technology), and desirable (human) elements for our project, and we need the mixed form of them. So we created a Communication Plan and Communication Campaign and different kinds of partnership possibilities.

During the creation and development of our project, we reached out to real users and communities to make observations of their actual situations. We tried to make contacts and interviews with five countries (Greece, Moldova, Hungary, France, Ghana) 30 representatives including victims of violence against women, NGOs, expert psychologists. This provided us the possibility to go after the big broad mainstream and those in the extreme spectrum.

Due to coronavirus, we didn’t have the possibility to immerse ourselves as we weren’t able to make interviews in person. That’s why most of our interviews were organized by e-mail interviews and/or online phone calls. Unfortunately, because of these circumstances, we didn’t get as many answers as we were hoping for but those who answered gave us some insight which helped a lot during the development of our program. Among those who responded we can find for example two very important NGOs for our cause: La Maison des Femmes and Coeurs de Guerrières. We also get in touch with victims for example a Ghanaian woman told us about how she was abused during her childhood and we get some interesting feedback from a Hungarian psychologist.

We supplemented our gathered interviews with other corresponding organizations’ articles to see how the victims document their own lives and get a bigger picture about the situation. We searched for how actual persons in need and communities think the situation can develop in these articles and interviews. We also paid attention if the pandemic changed the situation for better or worse.

We had a Pitching Session with Jeremy Caplan, director of teaching, learning, and assessment at the Newmark J-School who gave us some very helpful feedback and ideas on how to continue and develop our project. You can read about it in details in our previous articles: “Pitch Session with Jeremy Caplan — The Impacters” and “Pitching Feedback — The Impacters”

To give our audience a glimpse of what kind of information we get from our interviews, La Maison des Femmes gave us some insight into how they communicate, monitor fundings, and manage volunteers, activities, training. We get to know how their care unit works by having health professionals (doctors, midwives, psychiatrists, psychologists, etc.) but also social workers, marriage and family counselors as well as lawyers and police officers all trained in the care of women victims in violence. Besides that, we learned what kind of unique and innovative structure they use for the care of the victims of violence against women, what is their protocol when women ask for their help and how they reacted to the new situation during the coronavirus period.

We used these pieces of information to get new ideas and to shape the ideas we already had, to find themes and problems we didn’t think about before, to develop ourselves, and to immerse ourselves in the subject more than before.

Next to our article research and interviews, we created our own website where everybody can reach out to us and meet and talk with our community. This led to a diffusion of our content by our online community and by our volunteers in sharing our content with their own community. The chat and being part of the « Group » is one of the most important possibilities of the website as you can join and exchange with our community of women who are victims of violence or just people who want to help the cause.

Here we promote our publications. You can read all our interviews and articles about domestic violence for example about the helpline for abused women. Moreover, you can read ex-victims of violence’s testimony on the website with which we hope to make an impact.

On our website, you can get to know about our events, download our App, and can take part in self-defense courses (that can be shared by people). We create projects with public figures to sensibilise and reach a bigger audience. Volunteers can apply through this website or you can make donations for our organization so we can help more victims of domestic violence. Link to our website: https://stanciulescuraluca.wixsite.com/womenimpacters

We created an App to help women in need. Helpmenow is a new app, specifically designed for collecting evidence of domestic abuse. Not only can it assist with applying for protection against abusers, but it also helps users better understand what’s happening to them by providing a space to collect notes and recordings. About this topic, you can get detailed information in our previous article: “Implementation of the App”.

You can reach out to us in our Instagram account too. In our posts, we present our concept, our app and write quotes to inspire people. We have two kinds of highlight stories: (1) stories about domestic violence and (2) stories that empower women for inspiration and acceptance. We also hold Interactive live conferences on Instagram. Link to our Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/women_impacters/

We offer four kinds of partnership possibility:

• If you become a sponsor or a donor of our NGO, this will allow us to implement new projects in real life when the situation will get better. Also, it will allow us to promote our content and to organize a publicity campaign which will help us to develop our audience even more.
• If you are an NGO or an association and you decide to partner with us, we will work side by side, and we will be more efficient.
• If you are a psychologist, an expert (lawyers, doctors, policemen,…), or a self-defense trainer, keep in mind that you have the power to save the life of numerous women and that we could really use your help.
• Finally, if you are the director of a school or a workplace, we would also like to partner with you in order to educate men and women about this global issue.

In the future, our plan is to continue to develop our website, App, and Instagram account to be able to reach a bigger audience. Also, we constantly create interviews which we will post on our website and which we will use for the improvement of our organization. Violence against women is part of our everyday life that’s why we have to stand up against it. So don’t forget our motto: The change starts today!

Links to our Power Point presentations:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dpYNV9Y8vp8vxCUrHv54N0Y4MlQgpV1Cd56qWQOK5yg/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1azckW0IeTQqfoT7UXcApuRfP3NdL3Jltf-KbhtwEaVc/edit?usp=sharing

The Impacters team members: Valentine Castella, Clémence Hamard, Raluca Stănciulescu, Lilla Dora Mezo, Blanka Mucsi.