When Using Social Media To Do Good Goes Wrong
There is great enthusiasm to use social media for good, but many are abusing social media campaigns to conduct criminal activity. What can we do to prevent this from happening?
40% of women in Peru suffer from domestic abuse. In one of Lima, Peru’s largest slums I tried to use social media to help raise funds for a women’s shelter to protect them from physical harm. The intention was good but the events that followed were disastrous. I’m telling this story to bring awareness to a new evil that is emerging. I need help from you to figure out how to prevent this from ever happening again because once is just too much.
Background:
In 2011, I traveled to Peru to work at a community center for victims of domestic abuse, called Mama Victoria. Mama Victoria is located in Chorrillos, a poor district of Lima that inhabits almost 300,000 people. I created an ESL curriculum for children and designed the organization’s first website. I quickly realized that Mama Victoria is more than just a shelter: It is a comforting home for women and their families, a self-sustaining farm, an after school education program that is a safe haven for children, and a small business (a chocolate company) that helps women become financially independent from their abusers. The proceeds from the business and the farm support the shelter and help expand its efforts. They have been very successful, however, recent events threatened the shelter and the safety of the women Real estate developers came in and took part of their farm. During this development, the shelter was robbed several times by thugs with machetes and they threatened the women and children who live there, causing many of them to flee out of fear.
Mama Victoria needed funds to build a fence to protect themselves against these threats and thugs. More than anything, Mama Victoria wants to continue being self-sustainable but cannot do so without protection from harm and theft. That is why in March of 2014, I decided to team up my photojournalist friend to create a campaign to raise funds for them. For security purposes, I will refrain from using her name in this story and you will soon find out why.
We wanted to tell Mama Victoria’s story and raise funds to help them build a fence to protect the shelter. This refuge is the only place in the area that provides safety, shelter, education and opportunity to women who have experienced abuse and it needed our help.
Why We Did It:
According to El Comercio, an INEI family health survey carried out in 2012, revealed almost 40% of women in Peru suffer from physical and sexual abuse. Most of the reports stated that this abuse is mostly inflicted by spouses and relatives, which give the victims little opportunity to seek refuge. These women are usually the first to drop out of school to support their families, and most likely their abusers as well. With little education and no where to turn, Mama Victoria is the only refuge these women have. This shelter empowers women to protect themselves, leave their abusers and become financially independent and end the proliferation of abuse. These skills are needed to support their families, strengthen their community, deter the cycle of domestic abuse, and enhance their economies by financially empowering these women.
What We Did:
I teamed up with Indiegogo in conjunction with International Women’s Day to create a campaign to help raise funds for the protective wall. I was skeptical of the fees associated with starting the campaign but since there was a special promotion advertised, we decided to take advantage of this. I wanted to help and this seemed like a good way to do it. My friend was in Peru and I was in San Francisco, so set up a campaign on Indigego and used social media to spread the word and raise funds for the shelter.
Our goal was to raise $7,000. Over 45 days we sent personal emails to friends, updated our Facebook statuses periodically to promote the campaign and tweeted about it. We asked everyone we knew to do the same. We both work full-time so we did this in our spare time. We did receive spam ads from vendors, scams from people who claimed to want to help and some people even accused us of trying to take the money we raised for ourselves. I responded to a couple nay-sayers and even told them that if they did not want to support the campaign they could go to the shelter or send funds directly. The founder of the organization said I could use their address. That was the first mistake.
After 45 days, the campaign ended and we were able to raise almost $3,000. This was my first crowd-funding campaign and I although I did not raise the full amount, I still received our funds to donate to the shelter. Overall, I thought the campaign was a success.
Then, Something Horrible Happened:
After the campaign ended, my friend and I planned the delivery of the funds. My friend organized a Facebook event to have others participate in the delivery. After, she created a heart-warming video chronicling the delivery. It was beautiful. The children were happy and excited the founder of the organization, Nelly, was incredibly grateful. In a culture that does not promote or really even acknowledge women’s rights, she was overwhelmed by the international support.
However, about a week after the delivery, something some terrifying events transpired. Nelly was robbed at machete point by a group of men. The men entered the shelter demanding she give them “the money.” Nelly was confused. She is in her late 60's and didn’t understand how these strangers had known about the donation. They said that they found out about the campaign online, saw the video of the funds being delivered, and threatened her and the shelter if she didn’t hand over the money. Nelly was not unfamiliar to these type of threats. She told them she didn’t have the money (in fact she had already deposited the funds) and so, instead, the men ransacked the shelter and took anything they could carry. This type of terrorism is why we wanted to build the shelter in the first place. Before they could even lay the foundation of the wall, opportunists had used public information from social media to take advantage of an old lady trying to help alleviate domestic abuse victims.
In the same week, my friend got a slew of phone calls. She reported that men called her cell phone, threatened her life and demanded “more money.” She said that she didn’t understand why they thought she had money, but then one creepy phone call helped her figure it out. She received a phone call at home on her land line from a man demanding money. He said that he saw the video about delivery and knew who she was. After she hung up, she immediately took down the video, and later met with Nelly. They both exchanged horror stories of what happened and she reached out to me to figure out what to do next.
While all this was happening, I was completely offline. I went camping four several days and took a total digital detox. When I returned home, I felt at peace with my thoughts and was surprised how comfortable I felt without technology and social media clouding my brain. I took my time reintegrating back into my digital life, but when I opened my email and my friend’s messages entitled, “URGENT” my heart dropped. She briefly outlined what happened and I broke down into tears. A million thoughts raced through my head as I tried to make sense of what took place.
How could this happen?
Why would anyone steal from a women’s shelter?
Why did they put so much effort into finding the campaign online and actually travel the shelter with the intention of robbing it?
Why did they feel so entitled to threaten the shelter and my friend?
And worst of all, would they return to wreak more havoc?
When I can’t rationalize things, I become distraught. I tried to do something good from the comfort of my home city and I was fine. However, back in Peru, my friend and the shelter were in imminent danger. Finally, a few hours after I received the email, I got in touch with my friend over Skype. She sounded fine on the phone and assured me that Nelly was fine too. She said her husband was concerned for her safety and did not want her to interact with the shelter or Nelly anymore. However, my friend didn’t want to do that. “If we stop now, they win!” She proclaimed, and her strength in the midst of this nightmare helped me center myself. “You’re safety and the safety of the children is my highest concern.” I kept repeating this during the call but I knew it was not going to actually do any good. There is no reliable police force to call for help, and most authorities in the country are known to be easily swayed by a bribe.
My friend and I agreed that all videos and the campaign needed to be taken down. That is why I explicitly did not include any links to the campaign in fear of what might happen. I told her to lay low for a while and I would figure something out. This is where I make my plea.
Did I do something wrong?
It’s ironic that I am using social media to ask for support, but as many different perspectives as possible to figure out what to do about this.
I have to remain confident that I tried to do the right thing. I use social media as a tool for a means get things done. I am very action-oriented and do not like to be discouraged by externalities like distance when I am passionate about supporting causes I care about.
What Can Be Done?
“If we stop now, they win!” My friend’s words keep echoing in my head. Women’s rights are continually being threatened and I need all the support, advice and resources available to me to help promote women’s rights. More importantly, I need to prevent this type of atrocity from happening again.
I, myself, am entirely made up of flaws, but I am stitched together with good intentions. Therefore, I offer these questions up as a way to start a discussion about this and help create better processes in the future.
How can we as individuals not be discouraged by this story?
How can we use this story to create better outcomes in the future?
Should we abandon the traditional way we use social media to bring awareness to humanitarian causes and create a new framework?
