For women and girls who are experiencing domestic violence, mandatory lockdowns have trapped them in their homes with their abusers, isolated from the people and the resources that could help them. Cases of domestic abuse in Lebanon had skyrocketed since the outbreak of COVID-19 and the government-imposed lockdown in March. Many women are not aware that support platforms and safe shelters are still functioning normally during this period. So they end up staying in their houses in fear, and in many circumstances, they are threatened by their abusers in case they consider leaving.

To show that help is still available, ABAAD, a Lebanese Resource Center for Gender Equality, asked us to help spread their emergency helpline number.

Our campaign pushed people across the country to share this important number from the one place possible during confinement, their balconies. On April 16, at 6:00 PM, ABAAD's Emergency Helpline number became the talk of the town, as hundreds of people took part in the initiative, sharing not only the number but also messages of solidarity from sheets hung on hundreds of balconies across the country.

The next day, we launched a series of camouflage videos with influencers and celebrities to further spread the number by secretly embedding it in tutorials and subtitles, so that more women could safely watch the content while confined with their abusers. Many others were inspired to do their own videos. In April 2020, ABAAD received 588 calls, which is a 260% increase compared to March.

Being in lockdown doesn’t mean you should be locked up.


This project is:
Client-commissioned

Agency
Leo Burnett Beirut

Client URL
https://www.instagram.com/abaadmena/

My Role in This Project
When I first received this client brief, I automatically knew that this one of the projects that could really make an impact on what was happening to many women in Lebanon. Women who were stuck, women who were helpless and hurting, women who could easily be our loved neighbors. This project became more than a brief to crack; it was a mission that had to be done but done quickly and smartly. My creative director and I put together a team and after a couple hours of brainstorming, we knew we had found a solution. A simple solution that would be easy to implement by us but also others and that could potentially make a real difference.

I was responsible for leading the design and execution of the entire project. We started painting on their old sheets, in our parking lots, in our living rooms and on our dining tables. We hung those painted sheets with Abaad’s emergency hotline on our balconies and shot our first rushes. In a matter of days, our campaign manifesto was ready and we simply asked people to follow simple steps to produce their own sheets. The execution process was so simple that thousands of Lebanese participated. In parallel, we asked influencers to secretly embed the hotline in their content to be able to spread the hotline on social as well. What we asked of these people was simple, and we ended up with hundreds of pieces of content that could help us spread our important number.

Leading on such an amazing project that was executed by a team who believed in the cause was one of the most inspiring experiences. Seeing the results of our campaign made the team and I believe that our industry does have the power to push for change.