Unsilenced - Women's Stories of Resilience of Sexual Harassment

The projects was/is to raise public awareness and informally educate about sexual harassment taking place in daily lives of European Women. We not only gave a safe space for victims to be heard, b...

The projects was/is to raise public awareness and informally educate about sexual harassment taking place in daily lives of European Women. We not only gave a safe space for victims to be heard, but also a platform to challenge harmful judgements/ and typical accusations (eg:"its cause you were wearing this dress, and laughing a lot") that block freedom of speech and self-defence, consequently shutting out many victim stories; stories that are emphasised on blaming the victim instead of the perpetrator. The final goal was and continues to be the ability to stimulate empathy, specially solidarity among women, through both direct dialogue and digital storytelling. To achieve this, we created audio-visual exhibitions, podcasts and a special evening (both partners) for open discussions, we sought to shift societal attitudes, promote accountability, and encourage a culture of respect, equality, and support for victims and their stories. Ultimately, we curated dialogue that leads to long-term change in how harassment is perceived and addressed. Our participants, encourage the open discussion event to take place at least once a year, finding it helpful to both raise awareness and feeling supported.

Starting with field research and collecting stories, we realised that some European women had fear in sharing their stories. So we put together stories of people who had courage to share, rearranged the oral and written interviews into a more clear format to put into a podcast and make it accessible to listen to (using AI-voice over) and adding QR codes to the photos of the victims, or the clothes they were being blamed for wearing (that was used during the audio-visual exhibition) -We delivered an audio-visual exhibition in both partner countries, the gallery was called “What Were You Wearing?” (Based on victim blaming): both galleries were up for 1 month at active community centers in both Athens and Brussels. - In both countries we also delivered a panel discussions on what victim blaming means, why are most women afraid to share their stories. The discussions aimed to discredit accusations that blames the victim instead of the perpetrator, educating for more empath and solidarity as a necessity to overcome what most women suffer in Europe, specially in work and educational environments to create a safer and more supportive environment for European women in various settings. - We did extensive dissemination.

- field research in collecting oral stories - online questionnaire for anonymous participants), was distributed and collected , +/- 17 stories from Belgium and 15 stories from Greece - Photography of victims and related clothes were collected for sharing stories for the audio-visual galleries - Oral interviews and written were edited - AI voice over was used to protect the victims voices - AI voice overs were used to create the Spotify podcast - Both countries delivered and audio-visual gallery that were up at their respective community centers that was up for a month - Both partners delivered a "Voices Unveiled" discussion panel, with experts from the field invited as guest speakers, the discussion panel invited participants to also open up - virtual exhibition is linked on the website (for sustainability) - Outreach to policy makers, specially FEMM from EU parliament, we reached out their advisory committee and MEP's involved - Ebook (collection of stories, ethical research, and policy recommendations) - Extensive dissemination using social media (most effective), promoted with short videos and long videos (FB, instagram, Youtube, Spotify) -We created a Whatsapp group to remain accessible, and provided state emergency numbers.