Vaclav Masek, Sarah Molina, Eleni
Zervos
How do we effectively address a
community’s needs while simultaneously ensuring that we are not inaccurately
speaking on their behalf?
As a team assigned to create a social
campaign on issues affecting migrant women, this was a question we were
consistently revisiting. As none of us were members of this community, we knew
we had to approach this topic with the understanding that our role was not to
raise awareness as experts but rather to give our target audience a point of
reference from which to mobilize to become informed.
With that in mind, while narrowing down
on the issue we were going to focus on was a process with many changes
throughout, we decided to create a campaign that tackled the issue of sexual
harassment of migrant women in the workplace while our target audience would be
these women’s co-workers and allies. The aim was to equip Polish people with
the tools to collaborate with these women, not to recommend that we know what
is best for the migrant women in these situations. Furthermore, when thinking
about affecting change for members of at least two marginalized communities,
the approach has to be guided by intersectional principles. Thus, when
considering sexual harassment in the workplace, we needed to take into
consideration the specific needs of migrant women and how that influences their
position in relation to Polish women in the workforce. Both of these
communities face sexual harassment in the workplace, but one is additionally
vulnerable to it than the other. A social campaign is therefore ineffective if
it does not acknowledge factors such as language barrier and less social
capital.
One of the more obvious challenges of
working to affect change in communities you are not a part of or interact with
is to responsibly address their concerns in a way that does not speak over
them. While in this case our campaign was targeted towards migrant women’s
co-workers and allies, one of the limitations of our strategy was not directly
speaking to the women most affected by sexual harassment in the workplace. This
is particularly relevant to our campaign given that there are many reasons that
migrant women may not speak out against sexual harassment at work, not least
important of which is remaining employed. Therefore, one of the most critical
caveats of our campaign was to ensure that we were not encouraging the Polish
co-workers and allies of these women to speak out or report on their behalf but
rather to work with the women affected and serve as a support network for what
they want to do. Moving forward, our campaign would aim to more actively
include the voices of these women so as to ensure our strategy aligned with
their needs. Furthermore, all social campaigns require some degree of
condensing the issue at hand, and striking the balance between wanting to
effectively convey a message in a way that is accessible and still addressing
its nuance can also be a challenge. Thus, when creating posters meant to
address how to recognize sexual harassment, it was essential that we avoided
graphic depictions but rather describe more ambiguous situations that people
can recognize.
One
of the aspects of our initiative relevant to other campaigns is collaborating
with other organizations that are working with similar issues. We created a
resource guide for migrant women that included a list of non-profits they can
reach out to so this way, we can redirect them to organizations with much more
experience in the field. Both through our online and in-person initiatives,
which included putting posters redirecting migrant women to our site, our aim
was to create a more sensitized Polish population that can serve as active
allies to these women.
We initially had hesitations about the
effect of our campaign. As none of us were Polish speakers, we were uncertain
about our reach and whether the people who needed to see our campaign the most
would. With the help of a supportive network of Polish fellows and staff, as
well as willing friends and influencers however, we were able to spread our
message far and even some of the organizations we were in touch with were eager
to share our page. Furthermore, the process of narrowing down the focus of our
campaign was initially overwhelming. We began with a different issue, that of
fair trade and ethical labor laws that support migrant women, but when
reevaluating its accessibility within the Polish context, we knew we had to
shift our attention. Fortunately, one of the consistent and most rewarding
aspects of our time working on the campaign was our productive communication
with each other. We were able to overcome the setbacks that came throughout
this entire process through our mutual commitment to the aim of this campaign
and to being a constructive support system for each other.
Ultimately, working on this campaign
fundamentally shaped our time with the fellowship. How to responsibly craft a
message that resonates is a tool that is critical to activism, and this
campaign was an opportunity to comprehensively engage with many practical
skills relevant to social justice work. In terms of our impact within Poland
specifically, our hope is that this can start a conversation that moves far
past our social campaign. The aim is that the work we have done can mobilize
even a few people to take action on this issue, and encourage others to serve
as allies to the women affected. This way, in time, Poland can hopefully become
a country that does not tolerate sexual harassment, and none of these women
ever have to tackle these situations by themselves.
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