January 6, 2017, Helaina Hovitz
"Everyone has a voice, but even in a video-heavy world, not everyone’s voice can be heard. For young women around the globe, their silence is more deafening than words—but one organization is working to make sure that by giving them the power to speak up, they can create meaningful change."
Read the rest of the article here.
Deepest gratitude for so passionately investing in the expansion of Girl-talk-Girl to include the voices of young women refugees. Our first crowdfunded initiative continues as we’ve reached almost $8,000. We believe that as the refugee crisis destabilizes lives and communities, the voices of young women–the backbone of those communities–need to be heard. Therefore, it is with a sense of urgency that we put your investment in our ground-breaking voice programs to immediate use.
This Autumn, we will commence working with young women refugees in three communities across Europe to address their experiences with conflict, violence, and war.
Read the rest of our newsletter here:
http://eepurl.com/b853dn
Each week, Tech for Good spotlights ten initiatives using technology to affect social change. And, we were honored to be featured this June! Read the article here and check out #8.
As part of our crowdfunding campaign to bring our award-winning Girl-talk-Girl digital storytelling program to young women refugees, we have taken to the streets to discover how the public feels when someone is brave enough to tell their story. We have asked supporters to make signs, finish the sentence, "When someone is brave enough to tell their story, I feel _____," and send us their photos. We are then, sharing responses across social media with the hashtag #AreYouBraveEnough.
Whether you have already donated or want to join the campaign in an interactive way, tell us how YOU feel when someone is brave enough to tell their story. We are so moved by what we are hearing, and can't wait to hear your voice.
View the many, powerful responses here.
“Women and girls affected by conflict must be regarded as more than victims of brutality; they are agents of change who, if given the opportunity, can transform their societies.”
Ambassador Melanne Verveer – Executive Director, Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security
Dear Supporters,
While you may not have experienced violence or displacement, undoubtedly you know someone who has: a mother, a sister, a friend, a daughter, your neighbor, your world. These issues aren’t foreign, they’re personal, they are an intricate part of your world – and you can help.
Our award-winning Girl-talk-Girl program has made an immense impact in the lives of young women in New York City and St. Petersburg, Russia. Our voice methods will make a difference among young women living as refugees.
Today we launch our largest expansion campaign 10 Days 10 Voices 1 world starting with the release of our micro-documentary. You can see for yourself how young women in NYC and St. Petersburg, were brave enough to use their voices and spark a movement to end violence against women.
Young women have been committed enough to start this movement. We urge you now to be brave enough to continue their mission to unleash the power of compassion, and bring our empowering voice program to courageous young women seeking safety and refuge.
Our strategy is multi-tiered: if we can raise $25K we can ensure that young women in one refugee camp benefit from our program and their voices can be heard. For every additional $25K raised we can extend our program to young women in another camp, in another country, and can give them the opportunity to join the global conversation through our transformative approach.
Our aim is to reach as many young women as possible in refugee camps across Europe and beyond.
$25K = 1 camp | $50K = 2 camps | $75K = 3 camps
Every dollar counts, donations as little as 5 dollars ensures a young women makes it to one of our workshops.
This campaign is about numbers – about compassionate action - about showing solidarity. So please, join the journey and create your personal fundraising page to share with your social network (directions below).
Watch our microdocumentary and give today.
Please do not let these brave souls down. I will continue to reach out to you over the next month, and I know, together, we will make this happen.
With gratitude, as ever.
Yours,
Dr. Kristen Ali Eglinton
Executive Director & Co-Founder
Footage Foundation
Spread the word. Be part of the change.
Create your donation page now:
1 Go to footagefoundation.causevox.com
2 Click the button: Create a Fundraising Page
3 Register with your information
4 Share you page link with your social network
5 Don't forget to add #AreYouBraveEnough
PR Newswire
NEW YORK, April 28, 2016
NEW YORK, April 28, 2016 - On Tuesday May 10th, Footage Foundation begins a 10 day campaign with the release of a short documentary about its Girl-talk-Girl program (Mobile Digital Storytelling and Gender-based Violence from New York to St. Petersburg, Russia). Through Footage's website and its platform on CauseVox, the campaign will raise awareness of the power of storytelling, connection, and empathy in ending violence against women, and will call for action to support the expansion of Girl-talk-Girl to more communities, including refugees in Europe.
Backed by rigorous research, the methods of Girl-talk-Girl advance the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), notably gender equality, by targeting Footage'sDrivers of Change. These Drivers are objectives for Footage's programs, and catalyze SDG-aligned sustainable transformations within individuals and their communities; they work together through grassroots movements with compassion and empathy at their core. In Girl-talk-Girl, participants bravely reconstruct their experiences with gender-based violence through digital storytelling and share their stories with others, by so doing they form a network of compassion and empathy, as well as a mutual goal of eradicating gender inequality on a local and global scale.
With countless girls and young women seeking safe passage and refuge throughoutEurope as they flee conflict in Syria, the need to recognize to their voices, using innovative approaches to engender altruism and empathy, is immediate. The same urgency extends to girls and women who are susceptible to violence in all parts of the world. Globally at least 1 in 3 women will be subject to violence in their lives. Through the upcoming campaign, Footage is asking the global community, including individuals, and the public and private sectors, to help it expand its reach as it aims to continue its work with, and give voice, to the world's most unheard girls and young women.
Footage designs impactful, sustainable programs that use local technology and expressive multimedia tools to bring the underrepresented voices and experiences of young people, particularly young women, into conversations on the world's most challenging issues.
On International Women's Day (March 8, 2016), Salt published a list of 100 Inspiring Women in collaboration with the company Diageo in which they named Executive Director Kristen Ali Eglinton as #34 for her work with Footage.
The list elevates women whose work demonstrates impact, courage, innovation, and compassion. These values align with Footage’s Drivers of Change, which we believe have the power to catalyze positive change within young women and their communities.
PR Newswire
NEW YORK, Feb. 24, 2016
NEW YORK, Feb. 24, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Despite an increasingly divided world there remains a sense of unity in shared hardships, joys, and triumphs amongst everyday people. This unity, and transatlantic commonality between American and Russian young women is but one of the goals of the innovative Girl-Talk-Girl Programcreated and conducted byFootage Foundation. Started in 2014, and now expanding to reach more young women, Girl-Talk-Girl increases communication, about gender-based violence (GBV) using a mobile phone application redesigned by girls in the program. Now awarded a scale-up grant by the U.S. Department of State, Girl-Talk-Girl is escalating its efforts in connecting the young women from two cities, New York and St. Petersburg, Russia. The expansion is launching with a comprehensive toolkit available for downloadon the Girl-Talk-Girl website, and for distribution to NGOs globally. As a whole the toolkit and scale up creates an innovative program which empowers new mobile digital storytelling leaders in both cities who are connected with each other, and have a greater understanding of the other country. Through leadership development it is hoped that a new generation of women leaders will emerge with a deeper understanding of the humanity that connects all of us.
This toolkit includes examples of stories, such as Z, who focuses on the issue of catcalling and harassment while exploring a new part of the city. It expands on how these stories can be creatively conveyed through this unique medium by emphasizing use of camera angles and music. The toolkit also contains discussion points to engage participants in both the stories, and to help them consider GBV on a broader scale. The most remarkable aspect of the toolkit is its global focus. Available in both Russian and English, the toolkit reminds people that GBV is not isolated to any one person, or any one nation; rather, it affects women everywhere. By starting these dialogues, Girl-Talk-Girl reminds young women that they are not alone in their experiences, and gives them an opportunity to reach out to others who share in their circumstances, and hopefully find solace and comfort in the global community.
Article from wearesalt.org:
Posted February 3, 2016
By: Mostafa Al
For millions of underrepresented youths at risk of violence, old methods of communication are not getting their messages across. Footage Foundation is a nonprofit social enterprise that proposes a new way to empower youth – mobile digital storytelling.
Dr. Kristen Ali Eglinton, executive director of Footage, believes that for lasting social transformation, we need to empower people through their voices. Her company designs sustainable social change programmes that use local technology and expressive multimedia tools (such as mobile digital storytelling) to bring the underrepresented voices and experiences of young people into the conversations on the world’s most challenging issues, with a focus on girls and young women. Salt spoke to Dr Eglinton to find out more.
What are the most important issues you are looking to tackle this year?
We will continue to use our pioneering methods and technologies created through user-centered design workshops, along with the young people we work with, to empower them and allow them to share their own stories. This allows them to advocate for themselves, their peers, and their local and global communities.
Footage is incredibly unique in that we focus on substantive global issues such as gender-based violence, unemployment amongst youth, and gender equality. We know we can’t achieve lastingsocial change without inviting all youth – all unheard young people – to the discussion.
The overarching issue we’re consistently focused on is honing our methods and approaches. We’re adapting the social entrepreneurship initiatives, technologies, and platforms we create so that we continue to target major global issues through heightened participation, voice, and engagement.
What’s going to get the most attention?
For us, we’re going deeper into the ways in which compassionate action can act as a mechanism for change. Compassion for us includes: gaining new understandings of your experiences, understanding yourself with greater clarity, feeling a greater sense of responsibility toward your own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others, and taking action to help both yourself and others.
After sharing her voice in our Girl-talk-Girl program, one woman said: “If I was brave enough to tell my story, maybe someone else out there will say ‘Oh wait – maybe I’m not the only one.’”
So we’ll continue to explore how storytelling and voice not only provide a sense of closure and healing from traumatic events, but also decrease feelings of shame whilst increasing feelings of self-worth. Sharing our stories can help us become advocates – we can feel empowered as our personal experience becomes a catalyst for increased awareness and healing in others.
What’s the future for Footage Foundation? Where are you headed?
This year we’re on our second round of funding from the U.S. Department of State for our Girl-talk-Girl Program. This highly successful program focuses on illuminating the voices of young women in New York City and St. Petersburg, Russia, and their experiences with gender-based violence by creating an international platform for dialogue (see the trailer to the micro-documentary on this project here.)
Right now we are piloting a scale-up model which is supporting young women in becoming mobile digital storytelling leaders who themselves expand the initiative and spark further dialogue. What’s more, we plan to leverage our key learnings from Girl-talk-Girl and launch a global initiative called ‘HereHer’, focusing on empowerment, education, and equality for girls and young women.
This grassroots digital storytelling initiative is based on social entrepreneurial principles and focuses on putting young women at the heart of change. It offers employment and training opportunities – the young women themselves become empowered leaders though this movement. Then they can create momentum that leads to impact on a broader scale.
What would be most helpful to your organisation?
We are passionately seeking sponsorship from corporations, social enterprises, and other nonprofits that are inspired by our mission, and already deeply invested in community outreach around the globe. We know that our methods are unique and offer measurable impact, which will help other organisations reach their goals.
We want changemakers to partner with us. We want their help in elevating the voices of young women and girls through education and advocacy, in supporting us as we scale leadership development initiatives which ultimately create employment opportunities at this critical moment in history. We want them working with us so that together we can demonstrate that voice, participation, empathy and compassionate action are – as we would argue – the missing pieces to sustainable social change.
During the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, The Guardian drew attention to projects participating in the campaign, including Girl-talk-Girl in this awe-inspiring article.
Below is the blurb featuring Footage.
Girl-talk-Girl is a new project building connections between women at risk of gender-based violence in New York and St Petersburg. The project’s director, Kristen Ali Eglinton, said inviting women in both cities to share their experiences helped participants realise they weren’t alone.
“The young women found there were more similarities than differences when it came to their personal experiences of the various violences that they experience in their daily lives – from violence within families, to self-violence, to public harassment. Common feelings were shared around specific incidents – for example, fear when walking home alone in the evening, or anger over cat-calling, and comparable and intense emotions cut across geographic and political divides,” Eglinton said.
We are placing the personal experiences of young women in NYC and St.Petersburg Russia at the heart of the discussion on gender-based violence. Funded by the U.S. Department of State and conceived and conducted by Footage Foundation (www.footageyouth.org) the Girl-talk-Girl (www.girltalkgirl) program helps young women in these two cities share their experiences with violence through storytelling, these are then shared on an international platform. During 16 days of activism we feature these stories on social media and beyond. These stories help us all heal and increase action and advocacy -- action and advocacy that starts with the voices of young women themselves.
NEW YORK, Nov. 3, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Amid rising political tensions, young women from both the United States and Russia have found themselves connecting with one another around the violence that impacts their daily lives. In an effort to promote cross-cultural dialogue on the important topic of gender-based violence facing both Russian and American young women, in late 2014, Footage Foundation (www.footageyouth.org) created the Girl-talk-Girl project, which was awarded U.S. Department of State funding (seewww.girltalkgirl.org)
Girl-talk-Girl brought together young women at-risk to gender-based violence in New York and St. Petersburg. The project raises awareness of violence across these different countries by creating a platform allowing the young women to spark dialogue and share their experiences.
The experiences shared took the form of short digital stories produced on mobile phones, using an application the young women themselves helped to redesign. Over several months the young women participating produced powerful and, sometimes, painful stories, which they shared with their Russian and American peers. The stories included violence within families, self-violence, harassment in public and at work, and more. Throughout the young women's cultural understanding, civic engagement, and awareness of gender-based violence grew. One participant noted:
Just seeing ... there is a girl that feels unsafe half way across the world when she walks home by herself. I feel that way too when I walk home at 2 in the morning sometimes... "Should I call somebody?" Somebody else has that moment too, and she is across the world, of a different race, of a different size, of a different culture, with different hair. We might be all different in all those ways, but we have the same thought pattern.
After stories were showcased online, and in an international Google event, the Girl-talk-Girl team and participants created a toolkit to help community leaders and educators better engage young women and men on important issues of violence and harassment. All of these compelling stories, and the free downloadable toolkit, are available on the Girl-talk-Girl website www.girltalkgirl.org. A selection of these stories will be included in a short documentary, available from Footage Foundation later this year.
Footage Foundation has received further funding from the U.S. Department of State to scale the project in both cities. For additional details contact Project Director Dr. Kristen Ali Eglinton at kae@footageyouth.org.
We are super excited to announce that Footage Foundation has received further funding from the U.S. State Department to scale our Girl-talk-Girl Project in St. Petersburg Russia and New York City, USA. The overarching goal for us between November 2015-Summer 2016 is implement a scaling-up strategy which will include training up to 10 alumni young women participants in both countries as Mobile Digital Storytelling Leaders, and to support them in helping more young women share their stories. Watch this space!
I first heard about Girl-Talk-Girl when I had been in New York for only a few months. Work was taking up most of my time, and I was anxious to meet new people. I was so nervous about getting accepted to participate. In college I had studied three years of Russian and had an internship where I blogged about women's rights. I knew anyone I met through this program would be someone I liked, but what I didn’t realize was how dramatically it would change my life.
When trying to summarize my experience with Girl-Talk-Girl it’s easy to think of many words that describe what I have experienced, but impossible to think of one that perfectly captures it. The closest I can come is “community.” Though we only saw each other online and in text and videos, the girls in both Saint Petersburg and New York City genuinely became a community. Who else can you talk to about some of your most difficult moments than people you consider a part of a shared community?
I learned many things while working on the project. I learned how to make and edit simple videos, that my Russian had grown very rusty, and that no matter where we lived, all of us faced similar dilemmas. There were videos we got to see from the different cities that were nearly identical, and while we all are told people are people, it was so reassuring and hopeful to see that on a screen in front of my eyes.
My time with Girl-Talk-Girl was so inspirational that I even started volunteering with Footage Foundation and their Director in New York City. My participation did just what I had wanted it to do - it helped me grow a community. As the program starts wrapping up I am eager to see what comes next.
This program has been eye opening to myself, my peers, and to people I have talked to about the program. It has made me an international citizen, helped me voice my experiences, and taught me a lot about myself. I hope that the program can continue to grow and evolve so that other women and girls around the world can use it -- to build community, to grow, and to see how we are all the same.
Zoe is currently wrapping up a year of service of service as an AmeriCorps VISTA. You can find out more about what she does on her blog: The Rebel Prepster. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram at @zoeelizabeths
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Footage Foundation
Attn: Dr. Kristen Ali Eglinton
Phone Number: 917.428.2739
Email: info@footageyouth.org
Website: www.footageyouth.org | www.girltalkgirl.org
New York, New York – June 17, 2015
Recent research from Gallup and Pew have found that public opinion in both Russia and the United States increasingly views the other country unfavorably. However, Footage Foundation's U.S.-Russia Peer-to-Peer Dialogue Program award through the U.S. Department of State has led to the creation of the Girl-talk-Girl program to help ordinary citizens in these countries, in this case young women, find common ground. The final results of the Girl-talk-Girl project will be available in Autumn 2015.
The project brings together young women who are at-risk of being affected by gender-based violence including domestic violence in New York City, USA and St. Petersburg, Russia by providing an opportunity to share their experiences of the emotional, psychological, and/or physical violence impacting their lives. The young women in both countries have participated in workshops using the mVoiceWorks© method to create short digital stories on the “Girl-talk-Girl” mobile application that they helped to redesign. Later in June, their stories will be shared in an online forum, which will serve as a platform to spark peer-to-peer dialogue exploring both unique and common experiences of violence ever-present in their lives.
Program participants in NYC and Russia preparing to tell their story on the Girl-talk-Girl mobile application.
Initial opportunities to hear each other’s stories suggest that the project has been successful in helping these women find common ground. Young women in both locations have expressed changed opinions of girls in the other country. After hearing several of her counterpart’s stories, one participant in New York City noted:
“...Some of the stories we have seen from Russia are things that I also experience on a daily basis or have experienced before and so it was really cool . . . We know deep down that there is a really human level that we all have and that we all experience but just to physically see it and be reminded of it has been a really awesome experience.”
Beyond facilitating dialogue between young women in both countries, the project seeks to further the conversation around violence against women and women’s rights globally. Using these young women’s stories and discussions from the forum, Footage Foundation and project participants will create a toolkit to help NGOs, community leaders and others working with at-risk youth to engage them as they navigate important issues in their lives. This toolkit and these girls’ stories will be made available at www.girltalkgirl.org in Autumn 2015.
Footage Foundation is a US based NGO with a focus on amplifying the voices of young people worldwide. For more information visit www.footageyouth.org.
A really important article in the Guardian for us at Girl-talk-Girl as we work with young women in both New York City, and Russia. Though the tide is slowly turning as brave women such as Anna Zhavnerovich make their voices heard, the statistics on domestic violence in Russia are staggering. Here is an excerpt from Amelia Gentleman's piece in the Guardian:
Because there is no separate classification for domestic violence, there are no reliable statistics on prevalence, but the Ministry of Internal Affairs estimated in 2008 that it occurs in 25% of all families, and that 14,000 women die every year“at the hands of husbands or other relatives”, with nearly 65% of all homicides related to domestic violence.
“The reporting is very low. It is a very concealed issue,” Pisklakova said. “But things are changing; there is not as much denial as there was.”
Please share with your social networks.
Read MoreHello Participants of Girl-talk-Girl! Book June 14th 11am EST and 6pm Moscow time into your calendars for our International Google Hangout Event! Meet your Russian - US peers, contribute to others, and share your digital stories!
Please read and share our Footage Foundation Spring newsletter where we feature our Girl-talk-Girl project, and give you a glimpse on what's to come as amazing brave young women in Russia and the U.S. take part in our Girl-talk-Girl program sharing their own stories around violence against women to inspire action.
Young women participants of the Girl-talk-Girl project in New York City, USA and St. Petersburg, Russia were asked "What excites you about the Girl-talk-Girl project?" We put this collection of voices together for International Women's Day 2015. We absolutely love hearing about how these amazing young women want to be at the heart of empowerment for and with other young women around the world.