2015 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

Raise Shawwa's Voice is a campaign to spread awareness on the abuse suffered by domestic workers in Lebanon and in turn the rising suicide rate and unnatural deaths amongst them due to the abuse. The campaign's main message was to demand serious investigation into these deaths, in order to combat the source of the problem. KAFA have a strong following in Lebanon due to their ongoing social efforts, but the campaign targeted a large number of Lebanese who are still unaware of the constant abuse suffered by domestic workers in the country.

Creative Execution

KAFA is an NGO that tackles several issues concerning violence and exploitation. The campaign, with its central message, allowed for viewers to understand the NGO's main promise of spreading awareness on these issues through a widespread online initiative. Once logged into the site, viewers could only hear Shawwa if they shared the site on social media platforms, mimicking the real life situation where domestic workers were being seen but never heard. The fact that the volume of her voice fluctuated depending on shares, also reflected how in life, causes can only be attended to the more people talk about them.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

Currently, domestic workers struggle to be heard in their campaign to demand serious investigation into the deaths of their peers. We created a website, where one domestic worker, named Shawwa, would serve as the voice of thousands of others. At first the viewer would only be able to see Shawwa, not hear her. To hear her, he/she would have to share her message. Shawwa's voice would then fluctuate depending on how many people were sharing her message at any given time - more shares, meant her voice was louder, the less shares and her voice faded away.

Results

Our aim was to raise Shawwa's voice to be loud enough to expose the atrocities domestic workers experience in Lebanon. In the first 6 days, Shawwa's voice was shared/heard by 18,000, sparking a debate across social media, revealing the real, and some unexpected, underlying issues that needed to be examined in order to find real solutions. As of today, laws are yet to be changed, but in the wake of Shawwa, other domestic workers have spoken louder, as can be seen in the newly formed labor union.