Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming
Are you looking for a way to be involved in ending street harassment in 2018? We have a great volunteer opportunity for you: apply to become a Stop Street Harassment Blog Correspondent!
The requirements are to write one article (500-800 words) per month from January to April 2018. Applicants can hail from any part of the world, represent any gender, and write their piece in their chosen language. More info. Deadline is January 7!
THANK YOU to everyone who made our work possible this year! Here are 10 highlights from this year.
** You can read more and see photos in our 2017 Annual Report. **
1. Oversaw the 7th annual International Anti-Street Harassment Week. Groups in 40 countries and 20 U.S. states and D.C. participated through organizing street demonstrations, flyering, wheatpasting, sidewalk chalking, tweet chats, and workshops.
2. Surpassed year one and began year two of the first-ever national street harassment hotline, run in partnership with the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN).
3. Recruited and worked with two cohorts of nine blog correspondents from eight countries. They each wrote monthly articles about street harassment and/or activism in their communities across their four month term
4. Received around 200 street harassment story submissions to the SSH blog.
5. Nearly a quarter-million people visited the website and there were more than 417,000 page views.
6. Worked for a fifth year on an anti-harassment transit campaign with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) and Collective Action for Safe Spaces.
7. Began efforts to spearhead a national survey on sexual abuse, to be conducted in January 2018 in partnership with Raliance and GfK. Thank you to all of our donors who are making this possible!
8. Took part in many marches and protests, from the Women’s March in January to other rallies/marches held in support of issues like immigrants’ rights, transgender folks’ rights and Title IX protections and against white supremacy.
9. Spoke at 12 events in CA, DC, MD NH, NY, VA and Mexico City. These events included talks to high school students, college students, community members and global safe cities leaders. Also offered support to several groups for their events.
10. Received $1,500 in funding from the PinPoint Foundation and around $9,000 in donations from individuals.
To date, there is no nationally representative survey to document the pervasiveness of sexual harassment and other forms of abuse across all the places it occurs in the U.S., including public spaces, schools, campuses, workplaces, places of worship and private homes. There’s no better time than now to collect these data to back-up the outpouring of personal #MeToo stories.
We are partnering with Raliance, which works on sexual violence issues (it is a coalition comprised of National Alliance to End Sexual Violence (NAESV), the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC), and California Coalition Against Sexual Assault (CALCASA)/PreventConnect), and survey firm GfK to conduct this timely survey.
We are *so close* to having enough funds raised, thanks to our generous #GivingTuesday donors, Raliance and Pinpoint Foundation. We just need to raise about $3,300 more!! Will you help?
You can donate directly to Razoo (tax-deductible) or we also now have an Etsy store with various items for sale — and 100% of the proceeds will help fund the survey!
Please help us out today.
Today is the first day of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence as well as International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and this year’s theme is “Leave No One Behind.”
Building on this theme as well as the outpouring of #MeToo sexual abuse stories from women around the world (H/T to the hashtag creator Tarana Burke), the SSH board and I are excited to announce a new project.
Exciting New Survey
We plan to partner again with national survey firm GfK (they worked with us in 2014) to conduct a nationally representative survey on sexual harassment and abuse in all the places it occurs, including public spaces, schools, campuses, workplaces, places of worship and private homes. We hope the survey will show just how all-encompassing sexual harassment and abuse can be nationwide, as well as illuminate other information, like the young age it begins. To date, there has not been a survey like this undertaken.
Because this national sample of 2,000 people ages 18+ will reflect the demographics of the country, the experiences of smaller demographics won’t be as well documented, including demographics of people who face high rates of abuse. Thus, we will also conduct three separate online surveys that target three main demographics: transgender people, persons with disabilities and youth (of course acknowledging that some people span two or all three categories).
How can you be involved?
1) Donate, $10 or more. We need to raise $11,000 to cover the costs. The sooner we raise the funds, the sooner we can undertake this timely project.
2) Encourage your networks and friends to donate, particularly for #GivingTuesday in three days. Here is a sample message and graphic for social media.
If you were moved by the #MeToo stories, you can bring more facts to light about the extent of #sexualharassment by helping @stopstharassmnt fund a ground-breaking national survey. https://www.razoo.com/team/Shanationlsurvey #EndSH
3) If you would like to participate in any of the three online surveys (the main survey is randomized and conducted by GfK), help solicit responses for them or give input on the questions, please be in touch.
Thanks!
Holly
SSH Founder
Thanks so much Rctv28 and Elaine Espinola Keltz for hosting an important discussion this week on street harassment, including points like what’s a compliment and what’s not, how to deal with harassers & men’s roles in stopping harassment! It was great to be a guest alongside Noorjahan Akbar of Free Women Writers & Women for Women International and Jessica Raven of Collective Action for Safe Spaces.