CHALLENGES & GOALS:S

A FUTURE FREE FROM SEXUAL VIOLENCE

The ‘me too.’ Movement was founded in 2006 by civil rights activist Tarana Burke. The organization’s work focuses on supporting a spectrum of survivors across their healing journey and disrupting the systems of power that allow sexual violence to proliferate in our world.

A MOVEMENT, NOT A MOMENT

The viral nature of #metoo instantly put sexual violence into the public spotlight, along with the ‘me too.’ organization and Tarana Burke. The conversations — personal, local, national, and global, have already created immense progress.

WHAT’S NEXT

To truly bend in the direction of ending sexual violence, many of us are asking, what’s next? To address this, the ‘me too.’ Movement sought to follow the virality of #metoo with a broader invitation to participate, focusing on three key business objectives:

1.     VISIBILITY — Elevate the work of local, grassroots organizations

2.     ACCESSIBILITY — Connect everyday people with impactful actions they can take

3.     TANGIBILITY — Give the community a measure of progress

 INSIGHTS & STRATEGY:

SWEPT UNDER THE RUG

Said best by Tarana Burke, “A movement started to support survivors is talked about as a vindictive plot against men.” Through research and stakeholder interviews, we unpacked a continuous pattern: significant power and money goes towards silencing and dismissing this issue. Survivors discredited in the media. Decades of rape kit backlogs. History books excluding civil rights leaders in this fight. This makes it is easy to feel like single actions will not matter.

WHO IS METOO FOR?

19 million people said #metoo within the first 24 hours of the original tweet, and 45% of American Facebook users had a friend who said #metoo. Despite this, many do not see a role for themselves in the movement. Unlike climate change, where impactful action is seemingly everywhere, actions to end sexual violence feel less obvious.

OUR CHALLENGE

Take a movement that’s seen by many to be about eliminating a behavior and turn it into something designed to create a behavior.

OUR INSIGHT

When a civil rights movement is perpetually silenced, people can’t know how to actively be part of the solution.

THE STRATEGY

PART 1: ACCESSIBILITY FOR ALLIES

Broaden the spectrum of activism beyond the prevailing understanding of what constitutes a worthwhile and impactful action. Encourage allies by illustrating that even a single action will lead to change.

PART 2: PRESERVATION FOR ACTIVISTS

Preserve the actions of those who have gone before us, while creating an undeniable signal of this work as a beacon to the future.

 THE PLATFORM:

INTRODUCING ACT TOO

The first recommendation engine for activism to end sexual violence – and a blockchain-powered archive that preserves it.

YOUR NEXT ACT

Regardless of your experience or time, Act Too helps you find a way to participate in ‘me too.’. If you’re a busy parent, Act Too can guide you to resources for talking to children about consent. If you’re a student, it can help direct you to start a campus support group. And the more you act, the smarter it gets.

 TECHNOLOGY & TOOLS:

CROWD-SOURCING GRASSROOTS DATA

We started by building a grassroots database of actions from organizations that included commonplace ways to help: volunteering, donating, etc. Our natural language processing engine identified and extracted the metadata from these actions. Then, it scrubbed search, social, and e-commerce platforms to find hundreds more. Some were closely related actions, but many more were unexpected - like reading a memoir or shutting down rape jokes. Finally, this vast array of actions was tagged by topic, interest, and involvement type to help fuel our recommendations.

DECENTRALIZING THE HISTORICAL RECORD

History is written by the oppressor. To fight the systemic erasure of this movement’s progress, we used the decentralized, peer-to-peer nature of blockchain to archive every action facilitated by our utility to a permanent digital record. Every action’s unique 64-character blockchain ID also becomes part of our digital monument—a mosaic of murals celebrating the movement’s famous forbearers.

 THE RESULTS & IMPACT:

BUILDING A NEW NARRATIVE

Act Too launched on the third anniversary of the viral hashtag, garnering immediate global press and conversation. The campaign generated 1.6 billion impressions, reaching 71 countries in the first 48 hours. This provided grassroots organizations and their work unprecedented visibility.

The work received praise from celebrities such as Alyssa Milano, Gabrielle Union, and Mira Sorvino, and global leaders such as Melinda Gates.

THE END OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE BEGINS WITH THIS NEXT ACT

To date, the utility has recorded over 54,168 actions to the blockchain, creating a new era of accessibility in this movement. It also immortalized these thousands of acts in the fight to end sexual violence, creating a tangible and celebratory measure of progress.

•       12,169 Learned

•       12,812 Volunteered

•       7,730 Attended Events

•       3,899 Made Donations