NOTABLE FACEBOOK ACTIVATIONS: FROM THE RIGHT TO FREE EDUCATION TO THE FIGHT AGAINST SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Unicef’s #Abtalalmadrasa Campaign: Paving the way for Child Education
UNICEF and the Lebanese Ministry of Education launched a special back-to-school campaign to spread awareness on the availability of free education at all public schools in Lebanon and encourage parents to send their kids to school, no matter their financial situation. The campaign video outlines a social experiment carried out in Ein El Mreisseh, by which a small classroom was installed on the corniche with red buttons built into each of the desks. The screen facing these desks was playing a video showing a kid named Karim getting ready for school but the video would pause every few seconds to display a message asking more people to take a seat for the video to resume. This way, Karim was able to get to school gradually as people started to fill up the seats, ultimately reaching his class by the end of the video.
#Mesh_basita: Lebanese People Unite Against Sexual Harassment
The KIP (Knowledge Is Power) Project on Gender and Sexuality at AUB’S Olayan School of Business launched a national campaign dubbed in partnership with Office of the Minister of State for Women’s Affairs to raise awareness about sexual harassment in Lebanon. Dubbed “Mesh Basita” (as in “not okay”), the campaign’s primary aim was to mobilize the public towards acknowledging the many forms of harassment as serious violations and pushing for legislative reform. In an effort to provide a range of messages around this issue, organizers encouraged members of the public to share their stories and opinions on the topic under the hashtag #mesh_basita across all social media platforms. The campaign and corresponding hashtag gained rapid traction among Lebanese social media users as people from all ages and backgrounds, including many bloggers and online influencers, began to share pictures, videos and text posts supporting the campaign. Widespread and well-executed, the online activation was an incontestable social media highlight that marked the online community during the month of August and could very well serve as a prototype for other awareness campaigns of the sort in the future.