White Ribbon Campaign - Men Working to End Violence Against Women
Project Street Address
Project City
Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
Focus of activity
Community Involvement
Year the initiative began
1991
Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Culture Of Acceptance
Which of the insights is the primary focus of your work?
Personalize Responsibility
If you believe some other barrier or insight should be included in the mosaic, please describe it and how it would affect the positioning of your initiative in the mosaic
The White Ribbon Campaign (WRC) crosses over several of these barriers and insights. As a man's pledge to never commit, condone, or remain silent about violence against women, we are both challenging the culture of acceptance, dismantling power and patriarchy, and promoting new alternative models of masculinity. We are personalizing responsibilty for working towards eliminating violence against women, but also very much concerned with community mobilization, galvanizing outrage, and prevention and awareness efforts with men and boys.
Name Your Project
White Ribbon Campaign - Men Working to End Violence Against Women
Describe Your Idea
Description of Initiative
The White Ribbon Campaign (WRC) began in Canada in 1991, but has now spread as a global movement to 55 countires around the world. There are only 4 full-time staff in Toronto, Canada.
The primary objective of WRC is to challenge men to accept their role and responsibility in working to end violence against women and girls. This means examining their actions, beliefs and language, but also challenging their peers and acting as positive role models.
In addition our work has four other focus areas:
Educating youth; including developing education materials, training trainers and educators, and delivering training. Issues include promoting healthy realtionships, decontructing masculinities, exposing social norms, alternatives to violence, how to be an effective bystander and more.
Raising public awareness, with poster campaigns. Including work with the media and online.
Working in partnerhsip with women's organizations, governements, corporations, international institutions for a future with no violence against women.
International cooperation, facilitation and support, through formal collaboration projects, resource sharing, and networking.
Domestic violence is a complex issue embedded in gender, culture, economics, law, sexuality, but perhaps most intractably our social constructions of masculinity. When we aim to address and involve men around this issue, everyone benefits. Women and girls are more free of violence, and we are addressing one of the major root causes of domestic violence.
Innovation
Our significant innovation is the symbol itself serving as a catalyst and entry point for men and boys to examine their role and responsibility in ending violence against women and girls. In doing so we hope to be the first step along a path of transformative gender change for men and boys around this issue.
Important program innovations include:
Limited resources and a strategic focus on youth has led WRC to become an expert in the development of educational resources on gender equity. To further leverage the reach of these resources we have developed a capacity to train educators, including teachers college students on the use of these resources before they graduate. For every teacher's hands we can put these tools into, there is a potential for hundreds of young people to be reached with the messages.
We have also relied heavily on online technologies to deliver our message, with an award winning website, and recently launched blog.
http://www.whiteribbon.com
http://ourfuturehasnoviolenceagainstwomen.blogspot.com/
Finally, our decentralised model, whereby barriers and access to WRC resources is simple and accesible, has allowed for countless innovations in this work around the world. Men in Namibia have changed traditional songs and used men's vocal groups to promote messages of gender equlaity. In Brazil not only has the White Ribbon become a major part of Carnival, but our Education Resources have been translated and adapted for the Brazilian context. All across the world this unihibited access to our concepts, resources and experience has led to unique and culturally relevant adaptations of men's invovlement in working to end violence against women and girls.
Delivery Model
For delivery model, please see above.
In addition to our online presence, WRC also does an electronic quarterly newsletter.
Key Operational Partnerships
Our limited resources mean the ability to make a positive impact on the issue will only be possible through partnerships with others who are committed to this work. Particular attention needs to be paid to partnerships with women’s organizations, who have long been doing this work, and have an acute understanding of gender dynamics. Partnerships work best on the premise that each and every partner brings a valuable perspective and experience to the process
Key partnerhsips:
Women's organizations in Canada including Canadian Women's Foundation, METRAC, many shelters, women's centres, and advocacy organizations.
Canadian government, including the Canadian International Development Agency, Ontario Women's Directorate.
International NGO's, Instituto Promundo (Brazil), Engender Health (US and Africa), Sonke Gender Justice (Africa), PAVNHA (Pakistan), Family Violence Prevention Fund (US), Save the Children Sweden.
International networks and institutions, Men Engage Alliance, UNDP, UNIFEM, UNFPA, and the Ofiice of the Special Advisor on Gender at the UN.
Corporate Partnerships, Toronto Hydro, Ontario Power Generation, Procter & Gamble.
Foundation Partnerships, Donner Canadian Foundation, Ontario Trillium Foundation.
Education Partnerships, school boards, teachers unions, Faculties of Education.
Financial Model
Fees for our products and services are reasonable, but are also a key source of income as we recieve no core funding, and survive on fundraising along with sales of materials.
However, we do not want monetary concerns to become a major barrier to accessing our resources, so we examine those requests on a case by case basis.
What percentage, if any, of the total operating costs does earned income (from products, services, or other fees) represent?
15%
How is the initiative financed? Is it financially self-sustainable or profitable? How much do beneficiaries contribute?
As mentioned, WRC recieves no core funding for our work.
The effort is financed entirely by indivudal and event fundraising, corporate and foundation support, sales of materials and services, with some specific project funding from different levels of government.
Effectiveness
In 2006, over 800,000 men across the globe wore a white ribbon to symbolize their commitment to never commit, condone, or remain silent about violence against women. These efforts took place on every continent, in 55 different countries.
In Canada alone, 150,000 ribbons were distributed. Federal and provincial politicians made public statements about their commitment to ending violence against women. 670 teachers, and teachers college students were trained in the use of our educational materials. 650 additional schools across North America ordered education materials from our website. Over 1800 youth participated in one of our workshops or events. Over 4000 individuals attended WRC speeches or presentations.
Over our history, WRC has impacted on domestic violence legislation in countires as diverse as Sweden and Pakistan. Men for the fist time have organized around this issue across the globe. As recently as March 2007, we were invited to speak at the official UN Commemoration of International Women's Day about the role of men and boys in ending violence against women, for the first time bringing this perspective to the UN. We are consulting with the UN on a campaign to this effect.
How many people have benefited from your program over the last year? Which element of the program proved itself most effective?
See stats above.
In particular we were pleased with our efforts to reach educators. In 2005 we were focused on re-developing our educational resources, in 2006 we began our initiative to reach and train teachers with our resources. Not only did we reach a significant numbers of teachers, but we also established realtionships that will continue to enable us to do this work year after year, with increasing numbers of educators, and theerfore reaching increasing numbers of students.
Scaling up Strategy
There are four elements to our scaling up strategy.
1) Organizational sustainability - to move form project based funding to a core revenue stream which will enable us to sustain our work over time.
2) Growth of our national campaign in Canada.
3) Growth of our formal international collaborations, which now include Brazil. We are striving for a formal country collaboration in each reagion of the world in oder to a) serve as a regional hub for WRC efforts, and b) enhance our skills and learnings for our own domestic work throught these partnerships.
4) Growth of our education work in Canada and the US. A vision of every young person in North America recieiveing our materials around healthy gender relationships, equity, alternative masculinities, and effective recognition and intervention.
Stage of the Initiative
1
Origin of the Initiative
December 6th, 1989 – The Montreal Massacre, the murder of 14 women traumatizes Canada, and brings the issue of men’s violence against women to the forefront of our collective consciousness. While many of these issues had been raised by women's groups for some time, it took this tragedy for most Canadians to critically exmaine the issue.
As the 2nd anniversary approached in1991, a group of men in Toronto decided they had a responsibility to speak out and act against men’s violence against women. In their kitchen, they came up with the symbol of the White Ribbon. With very little preparation, nearly 100,000 men across Canada wore a White Ribbon that year and many more were drawn into the discussion for the first time.
What was then a volunteer driven awareness week, has now evolved into a global movement, with over 800,000 ribbons distributed in 2006 around the world.
This Entry is about (Issues)
How did you hear about this contest and what is your main incentive to participate?
WRC received an email notification about the contest, but was already quite familiar with Changemakers and the Ashoka Foundation.
Our main motiviation is to share the work we do, explore new potential partnerships, and learn from others doing this work.
Main Obstacles to Scaling Up
The single biggest barrier to scaling up for WRC is fiscal sustainability, and the concurrent instability that leads to in staffing.
Without core funding, and a revenue base laregely reliant on fundraising, it is difficult to do long-term planning, and hard to break from an existence lurching form project funding to project funding. Even a minimal core funding base would alleviate some of that pressure, and assist with the scaling up challenges.
Main Financial Challenges
See above.
Overhead expenses for WRC are low, products and resources are typically funded for development, production and distribution, but funders seem reluctant to fund human resources. We are working to grow a diversified and stable funding base through individual and event fundraising, corporate and foundaiton support, and sales of products and services, but it has been very challenging.
Even core funding in the range of $100K - $200K would be a vast improvement on the instability and unpredictabliity of our current revenue streams. Any kind of investor relaiotnship would be welcomed.
Main Partnership Challenges
Partnerships seem to come fairly easy for us at WRC, perhaps as a testament to our history as a catalyst and our decentralised model. Our biggest challenge is supporting all the requests we get, and maintaining regular contact with many partners due to a lack of resources and staff.
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