Archives for April 2013

Hollaback! Belfast is a new group in Belfast, Northern Ireland and they jump-started their chapter during International Anti-Street Harassment Week!

Chapter director Helen shares what they did (view their photo album):

“As chalk walking isn’t legal in Belfast City Centre, we came up with an alternative. We made our own chalk boards using cardboard and chalkboard paint and made portable-chalkboards.

The Student Union at Queen’s University, Belfast were kind enough to let us use their grounds to chalk and discuss with passers by the idea behind Anti Street-Harassment week.

One in particular passerby argued that we were making the place ugly with our slogans. His argument was that as a tax payer, he had a bigger say in what happened at the publicly funded Student Union. I informed him that I too was a tax payer, as well as a alum of QUB and so had also paid for the SU with my university fees. This seemed to placate him enough to allow me to be there, and while he disagreed with my method, after a long discussion, he agreed with our message.

Other local cafes and business’ around the city allowed us to take over their chalk boards and discuss street harassment with customers and passersby. Nearly everyone we spoke with recognized that street harassment is a problem, but had no idea how to solve it.

It was a really successful day as it gave us a lot of ideas on how to tackle street harassment in Belfast, and raised some awareness on the virality of the problem.”

Several groups in Germany participated in International Anti-Street Harassment Week!

They were organized primarily by ProChange, who told me, “We set up a FaceBook page with the title “Stop street harassment Germany.” The intention was to make the street harassment week more public in Germany, to raise awareness, to call for action and networking. We are happy that due to this many German cities got involved this year: Dortmund, Hagen, Catrop- Rauxel, Darmstadt, Berlin and Dresden.”

Darmstadt (Gender Equality Germany): “We were active everywhere in Darmstadt distributing our leaflets, starting conversations and we enjoyed it lots! Hopefully more people want to take part in our next actions- we are open for everyone!”

Hussein Elshafei of Harassmap in Egypt shared what his organization did for International Anti-Street Harassment Week:

“Harassmap is an initiative with the mission to end the social acceptability of sexual harassment in Egypt.

In pursuit of that mission. 2 volunteer groups were mobilized on the 5th and the 6th of April, in Giza and Alexandria respectively. They targeted bystanders on the streets, and conducted successful campaigns to turn their neighborhoods into safe areas. Safe areas are not necessarily free of sexual harassment. However, a safe area guarantees that, if harassment happens, there will be social consequences.

The Giza team conducted its outreach campaign at a bus stop. Reactions varied from aggression to complete understanding and changing perceptions. A graffiti message that says, “Be a man; protect her from harassment instead of harassing her” and another that says, “No to harassment,” were made during the campaign.

The Alexandria team conducted its campaign around Alexandria’s biggest shopping mall. A sexist graffiti that promotes violent harassment was erased by the volunteers and they wrote ‘Love’ instead.”