Campaigns to End Violence against Women and Girls - Virtual ...

The colorful campaign site is designed to “help you to work out what’s okay in a family
and what’s not”, and offers guidance as to how teenagers can protect themselves and
where they can seek help.
Results:
- 75% of respondents to an online survey stated they knew ‘a lot’ or a fair amount
about support services after visiting the website (65% said they knew only a little or
nothing about services beforehand). Every month, over 250 website users participate
in the online quiz to identify whether violence occurs in their families. Of those,
approximately 84% obtain a quiz result that indicates they do witness domestic
violence between parents, and 42% are likely to be directly abused by a parent or
caregiver. 72% of young people surveyed intend to use the information to act on
violence happening to them or someone else in their homes, and 15% plan to use
the ideas about abuse happening to a friend.
- Focus group discussions showed that teenagers found the website user-friendly,
engaging and helpful. Campaign materials were also used by teachers in health
education classes in schools. In 2005, the campaign won the Australian Violence
Prevention Award and the website evaluation was awarded the Australasian
Evaluation Society Community Development Award.
Read the evaluation report: “Young people’s views: Learnings from
burstingthebubble.com”
Blogs
A blog is a more informal, less complex way to establish a presence on the internet.
Functioning almost like a ‘personal’ website that can be easily updated, blogs tend to be
much easier to build than full websites. In fact many web-hosts and blogging software,
such as Blogger or Wordpress, offer free platforms that do not require any knowledge in
programming languages such as html. The boundaries between websites, which can
accommodate large amounts of intricately structured information, and blogs, which
started out as informal diaries, are becoming blurred, as websites are updated at
increasingly short intervals and blogs become more professional and more complex. In
the interest of time and money, more and more organizations are choosing to set up
blogs rather than full-fledged websites. Some websites also include links to blogs, e.g.
the Women Won’t Wait Campaign to end HIV & Violence against Women presents the
campaign on its main page. More editorial-type, reflective articles are shared on the
campaign blog, which can be accessed directly from the website.
Campaign blogs can intensify communication between activists working in different
geographical regions, as a virtually unlimited number of internet users can contribute. It
is however necessary to agree among activists as to what can be published on the blog
and what cannot, and step-by-step instructions must be provided for those who have no
experience in blogging. In large campaigns with many activists, it may be useful to
designate one or two campaigners to act as blog administrators, who collect contributed
information and upload these on the blog.
A blog can also be used as a purely internal communication tool by restricting its use to
authorized, registered users. That can work as an effective communication and
monitoring tool where internet use is common and all campaigners have easy access to
it.
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Campaigns December 2011