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#Run2Respect at the Airtel Hyderabad Marathon 2016

Posted on by Operation PeaceMaker julia
  • CATEGORY: MY CHOICES FOUNDATION

#Run2Respect at the Airtel Hyderabad Marathon 2016

My Choices Foundation is calling participants in the Airtel Hyderabad Marathon to #Run2Respect and help raise funds to end violence against women and girls

We all know the benefits of exercise; apart from making us healthier it also releases endorphins which make us happy.

But, not many of us a familiar with the benefits of ‘acts of kindness’. According to Sonja Lyubomirsky, professor of psychology at the University of California Riverside, people who engage in kind acts become happier over time.

Dr David R. Hamilton takes the concept further, explaining that acts of kindness create an emotional warmth, which release hormones known as oxytocin, causing the release of a chemical called nitric oxide, which dilates blood vessels, lowering blood pressure and protecting the heart.

So not only does ‘doing good for others’ feel good, it’s good for your health too!

Which leads me to the Airtel Hyderabad Marathon Run for a Reason fundraising campaign, which provides you with the opportunity to not only get healthy and happy by running, but by giving too!

So, if you’re feeling like a double dose of ‘health’ and ‘happy’, we invite you to Run for a Reason, and raise funds for My Choices Foundation, to help end violence against women.

1. Register to run www.hyderabadrunners.com. Don’t worry you don’t have to run a full marathon, there is also a half marathon, a 10km run or a 5km walk / run
2. Set up your Ketto fundraiser page at ahm2016.ketto.org. We’ll provide you with a “Fundraiser Pack”, with everything you need to know about raising funds for your run
3. Make a Rs. 1,000 donation to your fundraiser page to “kick start” your campaign. This will go towards covering the cost of your “Runners Pack”, which will include a #Run2Respect T-shirt, water bottle and wristband
4. Spread the word and get donations (don’t worry your “Fundraiser Pack” will tell you everything you need to know about running a successful campaign
5. Get training for your run!

For more information, please contact Julia Adamski at [email protected]

My Choices Foundation

This post was authored by the My Choices Foundation communications team. Our mission is to keep you informed on the cause, and hopeful that transformation is possible one story at a time.

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12-year-old saved from forced marriage

Posted on by My Choices Foundation mychoices
  • CATEGORY: MY CHOICES FOUNDATION

12-year-old saved from forced marriage

Operation Red Alert has successfully saved a 12-year-old girl from entering a forced child marriage scheduled to occur on 20 April 2016, in a small village called Racharla, Pentapadu Mandal, Alampuram in Andhra Pradesh.

With the help of The Social Service Centre in Eluru which is a CHILDLINE service provider (hereafter referred to as CHILDLINE), Operation Red Alert has successfully saved a 12-year-old girl from entering a forced child marriage scheduled to occur on 20 April 2016, in a small village called Racharla, Pentapadu Mandal, Alampuram in Andhra Pradesh.

During a recent visit to the girl’s village as part of our Safe Villages Program Operation Red Alert field workers were approached by the young girl who asked for help to have her marriage stopped. She explained that despite being a minor her parents arranged for her to marry a much older man without her consent.  Our on the ground team explained how we would be able to help and called CHILDLINE Eluru for extra support.

Through extensive community consultation the CHILDLINE team were able to reach a signed agreement between the parents, Sarpanch and a teacher from the local school promising to protect the girl from forced married now and in the future.

Unfortunately, forced child marriages are all too common in India, particularly in small and remote villages and sadly many young girls do not have the recourse to have these marriages stopped. According to the National Family Health Survey III – NFHS, nearly 45 percent of girls in India will marry before their 18th birthday. This is why CHILDLINE and Operation Red Alert work so hard to bring support and education to communities across India.

We’re extremely excited to see that our programs are having such an immediate and real affect on the communities that we visit. The Safe Village Program is the result of 18 months intensive research and planning and aims to help people of all literacy levels learn about how to protect themselves and others against sex trafficking and domestic violence.

During this visit, our team spent two days with the community taking them through a series of fun and interactive workshops targeting all members of the community. They included sessions such as, movie screenings, school programs, village elders and leaders meetings, and fathers and mothers meetings just to name a few.

The focus of the sessions are not to dictate classic do’s and don’t, but to open up a dialogue about how to speak about tough issues like domestic violence, sex trafficking and in this case forced child marriage.

If you or someone you know needs help or protection, please call CHILDLINE on 1098 or Operation Red Alert on 1800 419 8588.

My Choices Foundation

This post was authored by the My Choices Foundation communications team. Our mission is to keep you informed on the cause, and hopeful that transformation is possible one story at a time.

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We Won! Award for Women Empowerment through Social Media.

Posted on by My Choices Foundation mychoices
  • CATEGORY: MY CHOICES FOUNDATION

We Won! Award for Women Empowerment through Social Media.

This is our second award for our digital campaigning, and a prized accolade. There were 266 entries from 8 countries, narrowed down to 66 finalists in 10 categories. In our category, there were amazing 9 finalists and 3 winners. We were acknowledged for our consistent campaigning to end domestic violence and child sex trafficking.

We are thrilled to announce that My Choices Foundation won Grand Jury Award for Women Empowerment at the Social Media for Empowerment Awards, 2016 by Digital Empowerment Foundation.

This is our second award for our digital campaigning, and a prized accolade. There were 266 entries from 8 countries, narrowed down to 66 finalists in 10 categories. In our category, there were amazing 9 finalists and 3 winners. We were acknowledged for our consistent campaigning to end domestic violence and child sex trafficking.

We must say a BIG thank you to all of our co-campaigners (that’s YOU!) for your contribution to our campaigns through profile photo changes, online pledges, making videos, writing poems, taking photos, and sharing your stories.

As an NGO focussed on providing grass-roots services to victims of domestic violence and human trafficking, it’s easy to wonder what we’re doing in the digital advocacy space.

This is our vision in a snapshot.

We were proud to stand with Breakthrough, and Safe City as tri-winners of the award. Both NGOs do amazing work in effort to keep women in India safe from sexual harassment. Make sure you check them out, if you haven’t!

This was Digital Empowerment Foundation 3rd edition of Social Media for Empowerment Summit and Awards, 2016. SM4E is a platform for the recognition of social media-driven initiatives taken for the development of masses. It is also an opportunity to meet innovators and social media experts.

We are honoured to have been selected as the Grand Jury Award recipient, and look forward to achieving more for the cause in the future!

#Respect2Protect – Indian Cricketers from My Choices Foundation on Vimeo.

We were interviewed by the SM4E team interviewed us for our insights into digital campaigning, and because we prize investment into others, we’re sharing that interview below.

1. What was the motivation behind starting the initiative?

Our NGO leadership has long had a vision to include and champion men in the cause of ending violence against women and girls. This part of our DNA is reflected in the inclusive approach of our programs that invite men to be a part of the process in ending domestic violence in their homes and communities and keeping their girls safe from trafficking.

Our online campaigns are an extension of this vision. We had the incredible opportunity to connect with the Indian Cricket team, and ask them to contribute to a campaign. We had a short window of time to execute the plan, but we were already ready with the messaging – we knew that men speaking out about respect for women’s safety, independence, mobility, dreams and capabilities would be phenomenally empowering for women and even more game-changing for men. Respect2Protect is a campaign for men, by men about how men can be the change. We believe that men are at least 50% of the solution to ending violence against and exploitation of women and girls.

2. What were the challenges you came across?

This was My Choices Foundation’s first full-fledged digital campaign. We had never been a part of anything like it before. So there was a big learning curve the whole way through, from the production phase to the management phase. We had to learn on the go. What made all the difference was the diligent work of our team that worked in overhaul mode to get things done and volunteers with expertise in digital tools.

The lash back we got from those who disagreed with the campaign was expected, and didn’t amount to enough to actually be considered a challenge.

3. How are you planning to scale it up?

The scale of our Social Media initiatives will be increased through future campaigns as well as the ongoing, expanding reach of #Respect2Protect. We are already planning our next campaign, again geared towards men and boys, focussing on the role of fathers. Stay tuned!

4. What does winning SM4E Awards mean to you, and how will you leverage it?

Winning the SM4E Award for Women Empowerment is a very meaningful accolade. We appreciated the prestige of the Grand Jury and the rigor they applied to narrowing on finalists out of so many nominations. This created a confidence in finalists that, if won, the award was indeed a great accolade.

Additionally, the quality of the work and brand of the fellow finalists was further validation of the honour it was to have made it as a finalist. It was particularly interesting because the finalists were a combination of NGOs, government, and corporates alike. It is one thing to stand out among our fellow-resource strapped NGO peers, but to also be recognized along side groups and campaigns with very different organizational structures was particularly exciting.

The Award is an objective confirmation of the quality and impact of our work in the digital sphere. it will certainly help raise our NGO’s public profile and help us in fundraising as well as garnering important partnerships. It is also an impactful way affirming the good faith of every donor, volunteer and partner of our work who has believed in and championed our work so far.

5. How did you arrive at the technology you used for the project?

The technology we used for our campaign was determined by:

1. Goal of virality: The goal of the campaign is that it would have a “by the people for the people” feel to it. While it utilized the voice of celebrities, it encouraged every-day voices to become THE VOICE. Campaigns run on TV and/or in print just don’t have this feel or capability. Social media relies on real people for its success. People are able to own the cause, and express it how they relate to it.
2. Versatility and Timing: We had very limited time to produce the campaign and get it running. Social Media provides you with control over these factors in a way that traditional campaigns do not. Also, it allows for flexibility for the campaign to adapt to keep up with the viral uptake. All the mediums used were chosen for their potential to encourage conversation and individuality, and to disseminate multiple rounds of collateral tailored to the responses received.
3. Resource availability: Digital campaigns allow hard work to carry a message further than financial resources. There are an arsenal of tools available to anyone with a message that help you leverage it, if you have the skills.

6. What are the learning’s you would like to share with us?

We have just 3 simple tips for anyone planning a campaign for social change.

People are looking for honesty, practicality and that something special. If we want to design campaigns that will speak to people, we have to make it simple and to the point enough so that it resonates as truth. Yet, people need more than words. What happens after the initial buy in to the campaign is so important to the longevity of passion, the follow through of getting help, and the completion of transformation. Our campaigns feature different layers of action, and more crucially, offer to recourse to those who need help. Finally people on social media are desperate for social currency. They desire something special – a new perspective, an influential voice, an unlikely story – to take ownership of and spread among their peers. These three aspects of a campaign are what we have found to be so successful in catalyzing meaningful change.

My Choices Foundation

This post was authored by the My Choices Foundation communications team. Our mission is to keep you informed on the cause, and hopeful that transformation is possible one story at a time.

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Warangal Team Expansion

Posted on by My Choices Foundation mychoices
  • CATEGORY: MY CHOICES FOUNDATION

Warangal Team Expansion

Strategic Expansion: Find out why our Warangal team is growing!

If you have been following us on social media over the past year, you would have probably noticed how often we share updates on the work of our wonderful Warangal team.

Yet, we don’t share even a quarter of the news on the work that our team does in Telangana’s second largest city! The Warangal Team often educates hundreds of community members and schoolgirls, week after week, through Basti Meetings and the Schools Programme. The team has managed this with only* three PeaceMakers and one Senior Counsellor.

Warangal city is Telangana state’s second largest city, and strategically one of the most important areas of the work of the My Choices Foundation. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have some of the worst statistics in the country for domestic violence (increasing by 10 per cent every year) and trafficking of young girls. The violence at home acts as a propellant for girls, by making home seem unstable and opportunities to leave more attractive. Warangal district, in particular, reports a high number of girls being “exported” for exploitation. There are a few areas where our work to create safe, peaceful families and societies could be as important.

With just over a year of high-impact awareness initiatives, which work to educate communities and schoolgirls on identifying, speaking up, and ending abuse, we were receiving a higher volume of cases than a small team of three PeaceMakers could handle. Expansion of the Warangal team was urgent.

On August 13, we graduated 20 incredible women from PeaceMaker training and they began a two-month internship of in-field testing of their new skills. 15 of these women have now been hired to work as full-fledged PeaceMakers, providing counselling, rights education and support to victims of abuse and their families.

These 15 PeaceMakers are those whose work will be directly funded by the contribution you made to our GlobalGiving campaign! (Haven’t yet? Then do it now!) In the next year, these PeaceMakers will provide direct support to at least 150 families, and reach out to a conservative estimate of 2,000 women and schoolgirls providing education on rights and protections from abuse and exploitation.

The new batch of Warangal PeaceMakers is a particularly capable and passionate group of women, and we cannot wait to see what they achieve. We look forward to introducing each woman to you and letting you get to know how her story has shaped her journey to becoming a PeaceMaker. Throughout the remainder of 2015 and 2016 we will share one PeaceMaker story per month, so you can follow the PeaceMaker journey starting with the impact of training through their experiences as in their first year as PeaceMakers impacting Warangal.

My Choices Foundation

This post was authored by the My Choices Foundation communications team. Our mission is to keep you informed on the cause, and hopeful that transformation is possible one story at a time.

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Your donations make it possible for us to give women and girls the choice to live a life free from violence and exploitation.

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Announcing our rebranding: My Choices Foundation

Posted on by My Choices Foundation mychoices
  • CATEGORY: MY CHOICES FOUNDATION

Announcing our rebranding: My Choices Foundation

We’ve re-branded. We’re still doing the same, amazing work. Just with different names and cooler logos.

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. – Walt Disney

Anything new is always exciting and it leads us to paths undiscovered. Today, we too have something new and exciting to share with you all. You’ve seen the sneak peeks, but this is the official announcement! Yes – we’ve rebranded!

The original My Choices logo. 2012 – 2015.

The name ‘My Choices’ has been our identity for over 3 years now, and we LOVE this name too much to let go of it. Therefore, ‘My Choices’ has become our mother brand of two distinct operations and become the My Choices Foundation. We have a new look to our visual identity and have honed in on what the true ethos of My Choices is. You might be wondering why we need a mother brand?

We have been thinking about the organisational efficiencies of two separate NGOs, My Choices working in the area of ‘Anti Domestic Violence’ and Red Alert working in the area of ‘Anti Human Trafficking’ for some time now. While the two NGOs always had a significant amount of overlap of teams, resources, and messaging, they have up until now been marketed to supporters, partners and clients as distinct entities. The close association and common objectives become increasingly difficult to communicate to our key stake holders. Connecting the two took far too much elaborating. So why not let our branding speak for itself – that’s the point isn’t it?

Today, we want to re-introduce you to the two NGOs you have been following and supporting, not as two NGOs, but as one Foundation with two distinct but complimentary set of Operations.

The Mission

The My Choices Foundation started as a response to an issue that is so prevalent that it affects every household in India in some form. Violence against women and girls. While not every household experiences or witnesses violence within it’s own walls, at least one member of that family is certain to be exposed to it in some form whether first hand or through the experience of another person. Yet at around 60% of Indian homes do face violence at home.

The first response to this violence was to develop a program that would address the type of violence that is perhaps the most intractable, yet sits at the root of every other category of violence against women and girls: Domestic violence. By targeting the household, Operation PeaceMaker aims to access the very home of the mindsets that perpetuate violence and discrimination against women and girls. The home, just like the mindsets they house, is one of the most difficult spaces to access and difficult to affect change from within. PeaceMaking, getting families to work together to end violence against women and girls, is tremendously focussed work, and our efforts have stayed local in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana for the last 3+ years. Yet, we have long known of and been stirred by another massive dearth in education allowing families to be fooled and the lives of young girls and women destroyed.

The second response has been to address one of the most harrowing forms of violence: trafficking of young girls for sexual exploitation. Focussed on pre-empting girls and their families from falling off the cliff so to speak into exploitation, Operation Red Alert has worked for over one year on research, ground work, and networking to take shape into three major pillars of action.

Both Operation PeaceMaker and Operation Red Alert have been born from the desire to see families to become the focus of prevention and transformation of the most pervasive and intractable forms of violence against women and girls. Over three years into PeaceMaking and over one year into building Red Alert, there is much impact accomplished and a phenomenal amount more to come. There is no better time for every one of the supporters, friends, partners, and clients of both Operation PeaceMaker and Operation Red Alert to understand the common values and missions of both operations and how our teams work independently as well as together across these.

To help make our story and work clear, we have rebranded our logos and positioned them under a single Foundation, The My Choices Foundation. We believe that while both missions or operations are distinct, their success commonly relies on the choices of educated and empowered men, women, boys, and girls.

Our work is all about giving women and girls choices to live a life free from abuse, violence and exploitation. That has, and will continue to be, our guiding principle, and our new brand will reflect that. It’s a reflection of the journey we’ve been on for the last 3 years.

The Logos

The My Choices Foundation has been built on the vision of restoring the spice of life into the lives of women, girls and families, and making sure that this spice is never diminished by discrimination, exploitation, or violence. The most powerful spice in the Indian arsenal of vibrant flavors is mirchi (red chili powder), and red is the traditional color of many Indian festivals and celebrations. The My Choices Foundation logo is a heaping, circle of red powder. It is vibrant, it is Indian, it is bold, it is versatile, and it is a beacon of a life lived with zest and fullness.

The DNA of Operation PeaceMaker, once called “My Choices”, is bravery, compassion, and truthfulness. The turmeric yellow embodies the ideals of health and happiness that we hope can be the trophies of transformation in the lives of our clients. The heart is symbolic of both the goal of internal transformation in the lives of our clients and their families, and of our PeaceMakers who, choosing everyday to love a difficult world, are the bravest hearts you can find. The Operation PeaceMaker invites us all to join the story of peace-in-the-making.

Operation Red Alert as the name suggests aims to get people on alert for human trafficking.The red powder in the logo reflects the spice of life. Red colour is energizing, it excites the emotions, inspires urgency, and motivates us to take action. Similarly, the exclamation mark expresses strong emotion, urgency and action. The Red Alert logo aims to affect this kind of response in each person in India. It aims to trigger the emotion within us to take action and STOP this injustice! If we are alert, she will be safe! #BEONREDALERT

My Choices Foundation

This post was authored by the My Choices Foundation communications team. Our mission is to keep you informed on the cause, and hopeful that transformation is possible one story at a time.

Share this story

Support Our Work

Your donations make it possible for us to give women and girls the choice to live a life free from violence and exploitation.

I WANT TO DONATE

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