The 2007 Anita Borg Award for Social Impact Winner
From Anita Borg Institute Wiki
Presenter: Paula Goldman
Imagining Ourselves
Global Voices from a New Generation of Women
Project link: www.imow.org
Imagining Ourselves project has started in 2001. Paula has spent years doing humanitarian work in Ghana, Bosnia. On return she was depressed and wanted to make a difference. In Fall of 2001 she was planning to go to Israel to write a book about peace making. Unfortunately the timing was very bad for it as September 11 happened.
One day she was in the kitchen with a girlfriend and both were depressed about the state of the wold; started thinking how to make things better and came to talking about young women breaking boundaries, increase in university enrollment by women, those who go into the work force, etc. Paula went to the National Museum with a proposal to write a book which they were enthusiastic about, but due to the lack of budged could only offer to be partners.
They posted an open call with a theme “What defines your generation of women?” that encouraged submissions in any language and got more that 300 000 responses.
Then they thought that the book will only reach US residents who can spend over $20 for a table book and decided to start a project that would reach a much wider audience.
The project launched together with the book release in 2006. The launch was comprised of an online exhibition of artwork, literature, music, etc., accompanied by over 100 events in different countries.
GOALS of the project:
- Increase visibility & legitimacy of young women - Britney Spears and the like come to mind when thinking about well know young women. Many women doing tremendous work in the community weren’t getting public legitimacy.
- Connect advocacy organizations with wider public - young women have different perspective of the world, IO had to work with partner organizations and translate that message for them.
- Increase international community among the first global generation of women - this generation is easy to connect with their peers all over the world, but there weren’t many channels to do this.
Online exhibit at www.imow.org is in spanish, english, arabic.
Currently there is a Film a Day festivalof films created by young women where they talk about their issues.
Question: Who created the content for this - is it user generated?
Answer: Curated user generated content - open call for submissions. UTube for example, carries lots of low quality content and it is hard to find the “good stuff”. IO wanted to find work representative of the different parts of the world and helped chosen people create their story if they did not have resources for it.
How this makes a difference:
Some will see another person’s story and will get inspired. If someone wants to get further involved, they would join a conversation and will see young women and men all over the wold having extraordinary conversations about motherhood, etc.
Question: How do you handle language barriers in conversations?
Answer: 80% of traffic comes in English, overall it is a big challenge. For some languages IO representatives post translations.
Question: Have you tried making tools available to translate other language versions?
Answer: That’s one of the future projects.
With Yahoo have done celebrity blogs where celebrity women talk about motherhood. This generates large amount of traffic and reaches a much larger audience.
RESULTS:
- 221 Countries represented by IO authors and members
- Over 1000 000 people who participated in IO (mostly young women, but 10% are men)
- 39% of visitor staying on line for over an hour
- Here you can have a conversation with many people about an art work unlike in a museum where you’re just an observer.
- 11000 anthologies sold
Elements of launch strategy:
- Global media and PR team
- Global partnership programs
- Global advisory committee
- Celebrity spokespersons
- Yahoo partnership
- Online viral and guerilla marketing
IMPACT -TAKING ACTION
Did two surveys after year 1 and 2:
- 57% reported taking 3 or more actions as result from visiting the IO exhibit
-- Discussed an issue with a friend
-- Told someone about the exhibit
-- Got involved with a partner organization or increased social activism activities
IMPACT - PERSONAL CHANGE
Think about the museums - holocaust museum raises awareness about the genocide, the idea of the IO exhibits also is to raise awareness.
- 73% of respondents reported increased awareness
- 63% - I’m not alone in the struggle to create a better world
- 63% I am more optimistic about the future knowing that there are so many young women activists
Challenges:
1. Reaching underserved population - how do you reach those at the bottom of social pyramid? Reach those through partnership (Amnesty International), and hoping to expand, looking actively for assistance and partnerships.
2. Keeping up with technology - within a year site gets outdated, no budget to have the website up to date.
Lessons learned:
1. Trust yourself - really important to believe in yourself.
2. Build partnerships - really need to make a big community effort to put something like this into the world, especially online. IO project has large numbers of women participants.
3. Empower participants as ambassadors and leaders.
Conclusion:
All of you and work you do make this possible, some women come and say that what they are doing is not that significant, but it’s so important for us, especially women, to realize and acknowledge the difference that we are making, if you can’t own up to positive impact you’re making in the world, it’s hard to empower others to make a difference.
Paula has invited all to get involved in online conversations and their communities.
Discussion:
Q. What in this project has made the most impact?
A. A young woman in Lebanon that participated in the project got so excited about it that she organized a series of art events for women. The political situation is very difficult there and women used art to convey their thoughts. Some time later that girl was interviewed on TV following a tragic massacre and was asked who does she blame for this. She answered that instead of looking for someone to blame we should be focusing on ways to ways to help. Paula talked to her after this and the girl said that Paula was the reason she was able to do this as she knew that she has a support network of women all over the world.
Q. Do you think there’s a place for tools that would allow users all over the world, tell their stories to put their own content instead of curating it which is quite costly?
A. It’s in IO’s plans, as soon as there is enough budget for it. Presently users can post own content, but will not be very visible and there’s no way to rank content.
Q. How you address the cultural differences in the submitted works?
A. There’s a lot more that can be done and huge number of limitations exists. Originally if a work was submitted by a chinese author, wanted to publish whole thing in both languages, but then less authors can be put in the book. In the end decided to put in quotes in chinese. When dealing with people from extremely different backgrounds always faced with big challenges.
Q. How to involve men in the project?
A. Women talking among themselves is one way conversation. At the end of the day it’s all about creating partnerships. One of the exhibits is by and about young men, about what defines their generation of men. There’s still a lot to be done.
Q. All women on your opening slide are young, pretty, and thin - how are you addressing the issue of image of women in media?
A. They are young as the project is for young women. There is a “Fat, Fit, Fabulous” exhibit by women talking about they self-image. IO recognizes the diversity and the need to address this issue.
Q. Do you always think about this from the marketing point of view?
A. We wanted to show dramatic images, but after a while you face the fact that you can’t represent everyone in a single image. We reached our goal of image being representative of the project.
Q. When people submit their work, how do you evaluate accuracy of the representation of the community in these images?
A. Quality of the work itself is judged as well as making a strong social point on a specific issue. How representative they are, if accurately representing challenges and issues. There’s a large team of curators and co-curators all over the world, women who are extremely active in their communities and were helping to judge the submitted works.
Q. How do you define young?
A. It started as 20-35, but then project took a long time, so it became 20-40. Young women in early stages of their family, work, etc.
A lucky participant who has posted the most interesting question (How to involve more men) has won a copy of Paula’s book.