Initiated by journalist Juliana de Faria as a personal blog on sexual harassment in Brazil, today Think Olga is a globally recognized non-governmental organization. Think Olga’s mission is to sensitize society about gender issues and their intersections while educating and equipping people willing to be agents of change in women’s lives. Think Olga successfully uses social media to reach large audiences in their campaigns and partner with large actors like Facebook and Google to create accessible resources.

Theory of Change

Reducing sexual and gender-based violence requires changing cultural values, which can be influenced by movement-based organizing through online campaigns, storytelling and resources disseminated via social media.

Activities

Think Olga’s 2013 campaign, “Chega de Fiu Fiu” (no more cat calls), surveyed 8,000 Brazilian women about their experiences in public and published illustrations with repudiatory messages about gender-based violence. Thousands shared the survey results and images on social media. Think Olga also published an online “fiu fiu” map, allowing women to report cases of harassment or assault in public spaces. Eventually, the campaign was made into a documentary film, which circulated across Brazil and premiered at the ACT Human Rights Film Festival in Colorado. The film had over 11,600 viewers in just one year. In 2015, Think Olga created a campaign around the hashtag #PrimeiRoassédio (first harassment), after a 12-year-old Brazilian show contestant became the victim of abusive and sexually explicit tweets. Within a week, users shared over 82,000 stories on social media, encouraging women to talk about their first experience of sexual violence and harassment. In 2018 Think Olga partnered with Facebook to create an online platform helping women protect themselves from attacks on the internet. The platform has a reporting online violence guide, a questionnaire that clearly identifies the situation of violence, and instructions on protecting oneself in the virtual environment. Think Olga also started a campaign to reinforce women’s engagement in sports, teamed up with Google to make sure Google Assistant responds with relevant reporting resources to a request about sexual harassment, and initiated other projects advancing women’s safety from sexual harassment and violence.

Results

Think Olga’s online campaigns have involved thousands of participants and have been successful in influencing cultural norms in Brazil to be more favorable towards women.